Fight Eminent Domain Abuse

What Is Eminent Domain And How Can the Government Abuse It?

The Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution allows the government to take private property for public use. That’s eminent domain.

But there’s a catch: the government is supposed to pay “just compensation,” and the taking is supposed to serve a genuine public purpose.

In the early days of the country, the rules were straightforward. The government could build a road, a courthouse, or a fort—but it couldn’t take your land just to hand it to someone else. That began to change as the country grew, and over time, the protections the Founders intended have eroded.

When ‘Public Use’ Stopped Being a Real Limit

The first major crack in the wall came in 1954, with a Supreme Court case called Berman v. Parker. The government wanted to tear down a working-class neighborhood in Washington, D.C.—home to 23,000 people—and replace it with private office buildings and hotels. The Court allowed it, ruling that “public purpose” was close enough to “public use,” even if the land ended up in the hands of private developers. The promised replacement housing, as PLF vice president Jim Burling notes in his book Nowhere to Live, never materialized.

That decision opened the floodgates. City after city used eminent domain to bulldoze neighborhoods—disproportionately poor and minority ones — in the name of “urban renewal.”

A government study later found that the policy “helped to entrench poverty and segregation in America’s cities, particularly for people of color.” Justice Clarence Thomas noted in 2005 that “of the many families displaced by urban renewal from 1949 through 1963, sixty-three percent of those whose race was known were nonwhite.”

Chavez Ravine: A Neighborhood Erased

One of the most vivid examples happened in Los Angeles. On May 8, 1959, sheriff’s deputies dragged a war widow named Aurora Vargas from her home in a neighborhood called Chavez Ravine. Minutes later, bulldozers leveled the house.

Aurora’s neighborhood had deep roots. Established in the 1840s, it was home to more than 1,000 families. Residents were promised first access to new public housing. That promise was broken. Instead of housing, the new Dodger Stadium was built on the cleared land.

The Kelo Case: Anyone’s Home Could Be Next

Most Americans didn’t pay attention to eminent domain abuse until a case called Kelo v. City of New London made national headlines. The city of New London, Connecticut, used eminent domain to seize Susette Kelo’s home—along with more than 100 neighboring properties—to make way for a private development project tied to a proposed $350 million Pfizer research facility.

Kelo fought back, arguing the city had no right to take her home just to hand it to another private owner for economic development. She lost. The Supreme Court ruled 5–4 that the city’s plan served a sufficient “public purpose.” The aftermath was ugly. Pfizer eventually abandoned the project.

The same story played out in Detroit, where a working-class neighborhood called Poletown was demolished to make way for a General Motors plant. Three decades later, GM abandoned the plant, leaving behind a rusting hulk where a vibrant community once stood.

Inverse Condemnation: Taking Without Even Asking

As bad as it is to have the government seize your property with notice, there’s something even more troubling: when the government effectively takes your property without telling you—and without offering a dime.

This is called inverse condemnation. Instead of the government hauling you into court, you have to sue the government, prove a taking occurred, and then fight for compensation—all while paying your own legal fees and waiting out years of litigation. Even if you win, the government usually doesn’t have to reimburse what you spent getting there. PLF senior fellow Stephen Davis has called this “perverse condemnation”—and for good reason.

The Bigger Picture

In each eminent domain case, the government’s position is roughly the same: private property rights must sometimes yield to the public good, and it’s the government’s job to decide when. But “the public good” has often meant broken promises, displaced families, and neighborhoods erased from the map—while the powerful interests the government was actually serving walked away unscathed.

The Constitution’s promise is only as strong as the willingness of property owners to fight for it. Pacific Legal Foundation stands with homeowners against eminent domain abuse.