Home Is Where a Mini-mall Could Be

I had a rush of patriotism last week, built on seeing the World Trade Center site for the first time since 9/11, then hiking through Battery Park to glimpse the Statue of Liberty and later trundling up to Boston and summoning echoes of the Revolutionary War.

Or maybe the rush came because I’m 300 pages into John Adams’ biography. Whatever. I felt like a Yankee Doodle Dandy by way of the O.C.

The point is, I was high on my country last week.

Then, wouldn’t you know it, the U.S. Supreme Court had to come along and ruin everything. In a 5 to 4 decision, the justices gave cities wider berth through eminent domain to claim private property for business development.

The majority was led by the court’s so-called liberal wing. If that’s liberalism, for the first time ever I feel like sending Rush Limbaugh a few bucks.

You don’t sell many newspapers writing about eminent domain, so I’ll try to go light on the jargon. What the decision apparently means is that a city no longer needs to justify buying out some reluctant property owner based on some compelling public interest, such as a freeway or a school. Instead, the court broadened the definition of public interest to include -- surprise, surprise -- commercial development.

And, unlike the common notion that the condemned property is either run-down or a horrible eyesore, the target properties now don’t need to qualify as being blighted.

They only need to be in the way.

This may not be constitutional language, but the decision gives me the willies.

I’m not in the camp that views property rights as God-given or a human right, but perhaps that’s just semantics. If not sacred, let’s just say I consider property rights a pretty powerful concept.

For that reason, I have long blanched even in instances when government razes private homes -- after paying fair market value, of course -- to put in a much-needed freeway or whatever else. But in those cases, at least, I partially have justified the whole thing as serving the greater good.

But last week’s decision seems to redefine the known universe. The majority ruled, in so many words, that the greater good can mean a mini-mall or some other development. Such projects would serve the greater good, presumably, by generating greater local tax dollars and spurring the economy.

Some people quoted by The Times said not to worry, that California case law would preclude unfair condemnations. I’m not sure how that squares with what the highest court in the country just ruled.

Orange County has had various controversial brushes with eminent domain. Probably the most notorious was the city of Cypress’ effort to thwart a large church congregation from moving into a new building on land it owned in prime development territory. The two sides eventually settled, and the church relocated elsewhere but the city made it quite clear it thought a Costco-anchored retail center trumped any property rights the church had.

Should it make us nervous that all it would take to move you out of your house or small business is a friendly cabal of developers and a city council majority?

Uh, yeah.

In the grand scheme of things, I realize most citizens probably would prefer to replace a row of stucco houses with a cool new mall featuring a fast-food restaurant, video store and, oh, how about a 100,000-square-foot superstore?

If the houses were run by slumlords and basically uninhabitable, I’d probably take a powder on my principles and opt for the forced buyout and the bulldozers.

But the Supreme Court seems to be taking a much larger powder. I don’t see how it’s rooted in any definition of liberalism. Maybe I’m too freshly back from Beantown, but I don’t see how the fellows at the Old North Church in revolution-era Boston would have appreciated it, either.