Well, that isn’t precisely what they said. A more accurate summary would be “Your property is not your own if the government wants it for any reason – including to give it to someone else.”

A divided Supreme Court ruled Thursday that local governments may seize people's homes and businesses against their will for private development in a decision anxiously awaited in communities where economic growth often is at war with individual property rights.

The 5-4 ruling - assailed by dissenting Justice Sandra Day O'Connor as handing "disproportionate influence and power" to the well-heeled in America - was a defeat for some Connecticut residents whose homes are slated for destruction to make room for an office complex. They had argued that cities have no right to take their land except for projects with a clear public use, such as roads or schools, or to revitalize blighted areas.

As a result, cities now have wide power to bulldoze residences for projects such as shopping malls and hotel complexes in order to generate tax revenue.

Imagine that – these poor dumb citizens believed that they had the right to decide when and if they would sell their homes and property to private developers, and at what price.

Didn’t they know that the government has the right to give them a low-ball price for their homes and turn around and sell them at that sweetheart price to a favored local developer or appealing corporation. After all, why should a homeowner be able to decide that he wants to stay in his house when a multinational corporation worth hundreds of millions of dollars wants the lot for parking at their new offices? And don’t you understand that government should be able to decide that it would be economically beneficial to have a 100-house neighborhood consisting of million dollar homes rather than 500 houses valued at a mere $100,000 – it will bring a better sort of person, too. If the old owners can’t find a house in the town they grew up in – let them buy trailers!

Justice O’Connor, joined by Chief Justice Rehnquist, Justice Scalia, and Justice Thomas, notes the practical impact of this decision quite clearly.

"Any property may now be taken for the benefit of another private party, but the fallout from this decision will not be random," she wrote. "The beneficiaries are likely to be those citizens with disproportionate influence and power in the political process, including large corporations and development firms."

The liberal wing of the Court, led by Justice Stevens, wrote the majority opinion.

"The city has carefully formulated an economic development that it believes will provide appreciable benefits to the community, including - but by no means limited to - new jobs and increased tax revenue," Stevens wrote in an opinion joined by Justice Anthony Kennedy, David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer.

"It is not for the courts to oversee the choice of the boundary line nor to sit in review on the size of a particular project area," he said.

It seems to me to miss the larger point. The issue is not about the size or the boundaries. The issue here is whether or not the city has the right to take the property of one private party for the benefit of another private party. In failing to grapple with the larger issue, the majority effectively gutted the notion of property rights in America. An individual’s property is his property only so long as the government decides it isn’t more beneficial to the government coffers for that property to belong to someone else.

Let’s make it really clear what was at stake in the particular case. This was about the right of people to stay in their homes.

Susette Kelo and several other homeowners in a working-class neighborhood in New London, Conn., filed suit after city officials announced plans to raze their homes for a riverfront hotel, health club and offices.

New London officials countered that the private development plans served a public purpose of boosting economic growth that outweighed the homeowners' property rights, even if the area wasn't blighted.

The New London neighborhood that will be swept away includes Victorian-era houses and small businesses that in some instances have been owned by several generations of families. Among the New London residents in the case is a couple in their 80s who have lived in the same home for more than 50 years.

Yeah, that’s right. Old people, historic homes, and successful businesses are being displaced for the benefit of a number of large corporate concerns.

And notice the impact of the “living constitution” theory that is beloved of liberals. Under that school of thought, “public purpose” has morphed from “roads, parks, and public buildings” into “anything that will allow for an increase in government revenue.” Only those who hold to originalist principles – the conservative wing of the court – is prepared to stand up for the right of the common man to be secure in his own home from the marauding maw of government and the grasping hands of corporate interests. Yes, they will get “just compensation,” but such compensation often comes some time after the initial taking and at a level that does not reach actual market prices.

No, this decision really serves as the death blow to private property.

UPDATE: It’s too bad that the AP truncated the O’Connor quote. It becomes even more damning when read in its entirety (ffound on page 36 & 37 of the decision).

Any property may now be taken for the benefit of another private party, but the fallout from this decision will not be random. The beneficiaries are likely to be those citizens with disproportionate influence and power in the political process, including large corporations and development firms. As for the victims, the government now has license to transfer property from those with fewer resources to those with more. The Founders cannot have intended this perverse result... [T]hat alone is a just government, wrote James Madison, which impartially secures to every man, whatever is his own... (For the National Gazette, Property, (Mar. 29, 1792), reprinted in 14 Papers of James Madison 266 (R. Rutland et al. eds. 1983)).

Justice Thomas’ dissent is also, as usual, masterful. Embarrassment to the Supreme Court, indeed.

UPDATE -- Great blog, with a good proposed constitutional amendment.