Donald Trump and the Tightrope of Eminent Domain

The End Justifies the Means

First off, I want to make clear that this is not a “hit piece” or somehow “anti-Trump” in any way. I have not chosen a candidate to support yet and therefore am free to criticize any and all to whatever degree necessary. My goal is to bring forward facts to a candid world for you to make your own determination.

In previous articles I have pointed out some concerns with Donald Trump. But in this article I hope to explain a very important issue that I’m afraid many either don’t know about or if they do know, mistakenly believe that it is too far over their head to understand. This issue is known as eminent domain.

Eminent domain is technically defined as: “The right of a government or its agent to expropriate [or take away] private property for public use, with payment of compensation.”

This “doctrine” of eminent domain comes from the final part of the Fifth Amendment which reads, “....nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation."

Now, don’t panic. It’s not as complicated as it sounds. Essentially this means that if your house were to be say in the middle of where a new highway needed to go through, the government would come to you and offer you “fair market value” for your home. That way you got compensated for your loss and the government gets to put the highway through for the “public good”.

At least that is how it is supposed to work. As with most things in this world, something set in place for good can be used with less than honorable intentions. There are multiple cases where the power of eminent domain was abused in order to benefit a select few and not for the public good.

In 2005 the Supreme Court butchered the language of the Fifth Amendment when it ruled in Kelo v. City of New London that “the governmental taking of property from one private owner to give to another in furtherance of economic development constitutes a permissible ‘public use’ under the Fifth Amendment.” (Yes, the Supreme Court is not infallible and does make mistakes.)

Here we see where eminent domain becomes a tightrope. How far can the government take a vague term like “the public good”? For instance, in the case Poletown Neighborhood Council v. Detroit the court ruled that a very large tract of land could be taken from its owners and given to General Motors to build an automobile plant. Their reasoning was that a plant would provide jobs, help the economy and contribute more to the tax purse than individual dwellings ever could. Therefore is was in the public good to take the land away from its private owners and give it to another private entity, GM.

To better understand this overreach of eminent domain that causes the problems, we have to understand that the Federal power of eminent domain has limitations expressed by the Constitution, where property may only be recovered for the benefit of a granted power.

In other words, the Constitution lays out very specifically what the Federal government’s powers are. Therefore, it is only allowed to use eminent domain to fulfill one of those listed powers. If something is outside the government’s purview (e.g. deciding that a manufacturing plant is better than housing), then it shouldn’t be doing it in the first place, let alone taking citizen’s property in order to do it.

Michigan Supreme Court Justice Young noted, "After all, if one’s ownership of private property is forever subject to the government’s determination that another private party would put one’s land to better use, then the ownership of real property is perpetually threatened by the expansion plans of any large discount retailer, ‘megastore,’ or the like."

Exactly. And here we find the problem with Donald Trump calling this practice “wonderful”. It is not secret that Trump has used this practice many different times, and he’s not ashamed to say so. The problem is, never has it been for the “public good” under the umbrella of Constitutional authority. Each time it has been an overreach of government power for “Trump’s good”.

And I really don’t see how you can get around that.

Jonathan Paine

@painefultruth76

painefultruth1776@gmail.com