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EDITORIAL
Bulldozing the Bill of Rights
(Published June 27, 2005)

The U.S. Supreme Court has dropped a bomb on the American Dream, and its far-reaching impact will predictably do more to harm the average working-class American's ideals and personal financial security than any terrorist act imaginable.

It is unfortunate that Mayor Anthony A. Williams has taken the wrong side in the continuing controversy over eminent domain, as president of the National League of Cities and in promoting the planned government seizure of two large D.C. land areas for a shopping center and a stadium.

In an alarming 5-4 decision, the nation's highest court ruled June 23 in Kelo v. New London, a Connecticut land use case, that government officials are free to bulldoze homes and small businesses for private redevelopment with a "public purpose," such as an expected increase in tax revenue or jobs. Dissenting justices rightly noted that the decision essentially nullifies "public use" constraints on government seizure of private property that are embodied in the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution, a part of the Bill of Rights. (Government must still provide "just compensation" to landowners, though the government ultimately decides what is "just.")

It is not surprising that the editors of the region's dominant newspaper, The Washington Post, find no fault with what the Supreme Court has done. After all, the court's ruling merely expanded upon its 1950s decision that allowed the wholesale destruction of Southwest Washington neighborhoods to move forward -- a plan advanced by the Post's publisher at the time, Philip Graham, and a then-new business organization he founded with a lofty title, the Federal City Council.

Since that time, the Federal City Council -- a by-invitation membership group that includes many of the region's wealthiest developers and bestows honorary membership on high-level federal officials -- has grown increasingly secretive in exerting its powerful influence over matters of public policy.

Many native Washingtonians still refer to Southwest's redevelopment half a century ago as "Negro removal." Many critics of the Supreme Court's Kelo ruling -- including the court's only black justice, Clarence Thomas -- predict that lower-income and minority Americans will disproportionately suffer the consequences of government-forced upheavals.How middle-class Americans react to the decision could have an enormous effect over the next several years on the American way of life. Will Americans still rush to invest their hard-earned savings along with their blood, sweat and tears in fixer-upper houses in marginal neighborhoods, risking everything on building their dream home when impatient government officials can now take it all away with an area-wide redevelopment plan? Will individuals continue to risk their life savings on starting small businesses in under-served neighborhoods, when the government now has free rein to shut them down and hand their customer base to a bigger business?

Washingtonians might also wonder what previously mothballed projects local power brokers already are dusting off or what new projects they drool to build on someone else's land, emboldened by a high court decision that will surely make it harder for neighborhoods to fight city hall. What happens now to residents' concerns about neighborhood-altering over-development, as long as politicians' monied friends can help manufacture a showing of "public support"?

Copyright 2005 The Common Denominator