About a dozen Seacoast residents gathered in Market Square last Tuesday to rally for property rights and protest the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent ruling on eminent domain.
“It’s unconstitutional what they did,” said Catherine Van Wyk, holding a sign that read “Bad government, that’s not your property.”
“We’re just fighting for the little people, the people that get their property taken just because the government says (it) can,” she said.
The property rights rally was one of several held around the state and in parts of Massachusetts as a response to the Supreme Court’s decision in the case of Kelo v. New London. The court ruled on June 23 that the City of New London, Conn., could purchase private property from an owner and sell it to private developers to increase economic development.
Dave Mincin of Dover said the ruling was a “symptom of a larger problem of … growing government domination of our lives.”
“The ‘public good’ is really not you and me, it’s the government, and more money for them,” he said.
Mincin, who recently moved to New Hampshire as part of the Free State Project, said he’d like to see the state Legislature “tighten up” laws to restrict the government’s ability to seize property under eminent domain. Last week, N.H. Senate President Tom Eaton announced the creation of a legislative task force to protect private property rights.
“There are legitimate reasons why the government needs to take private property for a public project, such as road widening or flood control,” Eaton said in a statement. “However, the government should never be allowed to take someone’s private property just because it thinks the property could be put to better use by someone else.”
Jim Perry of Peterborough organized the series of rallies.
“The cornerstone of the American dream is to own property,” he said. When the government says it can claim private property for the public good, Perry said the government is “bringing about Communism in a faster pace.”
Perry said a New England-wide rally is scheduled for Sunday, July 24 in front of the Statehouse in Concord.
“There are a number of citizens from New England (who) are pretty upset about the Kelo v. New London decision,” he said. A previous rally Perry attended in Connecticut on July 5 was an “eye-opening experience.”
“I’ve never seen so many people from every end of the political spectrum … all fighting for the same thing at the same time,” he said.
Wyk said the purpose of the Portsmouth rally was “to get (the issue) out there, to get people to know the government has got more power than people think it does.”
In the Supreme Court’s ruling, Justice John Paul Stevens wrote that the court’s decision does not stop individual states from placing restrictions on how they exercise their power of eminent domain.
The six senators on the state’s legislative task force—Bob Odell, Peter Bragdon, Joe Foster, Bob Clegg, Dick Green and David Gottesman—are charged with studying the state’s current laws regarding eminent domain and will recommend legislation that will “protect citizens from well-intentioned but overreaching municipalities,” Eaton said in a statement.
A 1985 ruling by the New Hampshire Supreme Court found that municipalities must consider both social costs and the “probable benefits” of taking private land for a project, meaning that simple economic development alone cannot justify the seizing of land.
Charlie Arlinghaus, president of the Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy, a conservative think tank in New Hampshire, said the court’s ruling has dramatically changed what people thought the “public use” meant.
“It’s actually very scary. If the Supreme Court meant what it said, there’s no such thing as private property any more,” he said.
Arlinghaus expects more legislation addressing eminent domain to appear before the N.H. House and Senate.
“I think that what will likely happen is there will be an effort in the Legislature … to change property laws,” Arlinghaus said. “(Efforts) have failed in the past because, in general, the Legislature has said, ‘there’s no problem, what are we fixing.’ And now there is a problem and we have to do something. People who have supported changes in the past will bring those forward now.”
The state has also been the site of a different sort of eminent domain battle. Supreme Court Justice David Souter, who voted in favor of Kelo v. New London, has a home in Weare. Shortly after the court’s ruling, California activist Logan Clements approached the town with plans to seize Souter’s property and replace it with a hotel. In a press release, Clements said he would call it “The Lost Liberty Hotel,” and said a hotel on the property would generate more tax revenue than Souter’s home. Though Clements’ hotel plans are still in the exploratory stages, he has posted a request on his Web site, www.freestarmedia.com, asking for interested hotel developers to contact him. Though Clements’ idea has some support among private property advocates, not everyone agrees.
Mike Fisher, a member of the Free State Project, said he would protest any attempts to take Souter’s property. Fisher is a Newmarket resident who was arrested in May for performing a manicure without a license as part of protest of unnecessary government regulation.
“If Clements’ hotel plans are seriously attempted, I’ve taken a vow to protect Souter’s home in Weare by a fast of several days and by standing in front of bulldozers if necessary,” he said in an e-mail. “I am opposing many of my own friends in this matter because I believe eminent domain is wrong, even against Souter.”
Perry agreed.
“When I first heard about it, I laughed, I thought it was pretty funny,” he said. “I didn’t feel too bad at first, but frankly, I think stooping to the same level the tyrants stoop to is kind of disgusting.”