Three months ago, the Supreme Court had another chance to fix one of the worst decisions it's issued this century. On March 24, 2025, the justices declined to hear Bowers v. Oneida County Industrial Development Agency — a case in which a New York government agency seized a developer's contracted land and handed it to a business competitor for a parking lot. The Institute for Justice asked the Court to use the case to overrule Kelo v. City of New London. The Court said no. This Tuesday marks the 21st anniversary of the original ruling, and there's still no federal correction in sight.

Here's what Kelo did: it took the Fifth Amendment's plain phrase "public use" — roads, schools, genuine public infrastructure — and let courts read it as "public purpose," meaning whatever a city council decides looks promising on a spreadsheet. As Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote in dissent, "Under the banner of economic development, all private property is now vulnerable to being taken and transferred to another private owner..." She wasn't being hyperbolic. She was describing the law as it now exists.

I've spent 30 years in the rooms where capital actually gets deployed: structuring private equity deals, advising family offices, testifying as an expert witness on fiduciary duty and property matters across multiple states. Property rights aren't an abstract theory to me. They're the floor that lets working families build something durable, pass something on. Kelo told those families their floor was subject to renegotiation whenever a more tax-productive tenant could be found.

Susette Kelo and her neighbors in Fort Trumbull, Connecticut, weren't squatters. Some had owned their homes for generations. New London wanted the land for a development plan anchored by a new Pfizer research facility: hotels, condos,........

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