Supreme Court Not Interested in Protecting Property Rights from Eminent Domain Abuse

The Supreme Court announced this morning that it will not hear property owner Nick Sprayregen's appeal challenging New York's use of eminent domain on behalf of Columbia University. This means that June's notorious New York Court of Appeals ruling will stand and the state's land grab will proceed.

As I noted on Friday, it takes four votes for the full Court to agree to hear a case. So one or more of the four conservative justices joined the liberal bloc in rejecting this appeal. Since none of the votes were made public—and because it's a little early for the clerks and other insiders to reveal what happened backstage—we don't yet know what transpired. But we do know the results: The Court's disastrous precedent in Kelo v. City of New London (2005) stands unchallenged while property owners in New York remain at the mercy of the state's disgraceful eminent domain abuse.