North Carolina Using Eminent Domain To Seize Homes and a Church for Electric Car Factory

Under the Kelo v. New London Supreme Court decision, a state can take private land to give to a private developer for almost any reason it wants.

VinFast is the first company to develop electric vehicles in its native Vietnam, and it's now making inroads into the American market. Last year, it announced it would build a factory in North Carolina that would manufacture both electric cars and batteries. Then, last week, the company said it would not be able to begin production at the facility until 2025, rather than the initial summer 2024 target.

An upstart company needing extra time to fulfill its promises is hardly news. But in this case, a lot hangs in the balance, as the North Carolina government has pledged to use eminent domain to evict multiple homeowners, businesses, and a church.

When Gov. Roy Cooper announced the deal in March 2022, he called the project "transformative" and said it would "bring many good jobs to our state." CNBC cited the project when it named North Carolina America's Top State for Business, marveling that Cooper, a Democrat, was able to strike such business-friendly deals with a General Assembly dominated by Republicans.

While it was only founded in 2017, VinFast has the backing of Vietnam's wealthiest citizen and has been valued somewhere between $20 billion and $60 billion. For the North Carolina factory, the company pledged to spend $4 billion and create 7,500 jobs within five years. In exchange, the state promised incentives totaling $1.2 billion, including $450 million toward site preparation; $400 million from Chatham County, where the facility would be located; and a $316 million grant over 32 years in which the company is reimbursed for the state income tax money its employees pay.

But taxpayer money isn't the only thing the state is giving away. As part of its site preparation process, the North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT) also planned roadway improvements to accommodate the traffic a new factory would create. Those plans would require displacing a total of 27 homes, five businesses, and Merry Oaks Baptist Church, which has stood on its spot since 1888.

Local residents raised concerns during the NCDOT's public comments meetings. While the department ultimately agreed to alter its plans slightly, a spokesperson told the local Chatham News + Record that while "multiple concepts were considered for the transportation improvements needed for the VinFast site," none would be "able to avoid the relocation of Merry Oaks Baptist Church."

The state is nominally authorized under the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution to take private land for "public use," but only with "just compensation." In 2005, the Supreme Court decided in Kelo v. New London that a state could seize private land to give to another private owner for the purposes of economic development. North Carolina's use of eminent domain for roadway improvements rather than the factory itself could be enough to circumvent the "public use" aspect of the takings clause, but under the Kelo decision, it could have taken the properties for either reason.

Notably, the Kelo decision was sparked by the city of New London, Connecticut, seizing homes for the construction of a Pfizer facility that was ultimately never even built. This was cold comfort to the people who lost their homes. Similarly, a pause in VinFast's production schedule will mean little to the homeowners and churchgoers whose properties are in danger of being seized in order to benefit a billion-dollar company.

Comments

[Longtobefree]

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[Don't look at me!]

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[Carey Allison]

Somehow that seems "equitable".

[SRG]

Probably worth taking to the SC - I think Kelo would be overturned in a heartbeat now, and rightly so.

[Sometimes a Great Notion]

I don't think it would. I don't think SCOTUS will want to create a definition for the public good and some kind of formula for whether something passes it. The people of NC are free to pass law or amendment to restrain the practice, like a number of states did in response to Kelo. I think the best case for them to tackle would be a federal taking where states rights don't become an issue.

[SRG]

Thomas showed how it could be done in his dissent. FWIW he's the last remaining judge from Kelo.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/04-108.ZD1.html

[charliehall]

Justice Thomas errs with this statement:

"They were common carriers–quasi-public entities. "

This is false. Carrier refers to transportation, not to grist mills or other factories. It means that the transportation company has to charge you the published rates and not discriminate. There were no common carriers at the time of the writing of the takings cause. The first common carrier turnpike was the Philadelphia and Lancaster Turnpike, which began service in 1794; the first canal was the South Hadley Canal in Massachusetts, which began service in 1795; and the first common carrier railroad was the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, which began service in 1830. Justice Thomas's dislike of Kelo may be well justified, but he is making stuff up here.

Oh and the B&O -- partly owned by the State of Maryland and the City of Baltimore -- was denied eminent domain rights in Pennsylvania and parts of Virginia by local politicians, showing that common carrier and eminent domain are not linked in the way Justice Thomas might want. Governments in both PA and VA had made their OWN investments in competing railroads; one doesn't usually think of VA as being a big socialist state but it didn't divest its last railroad equity until the 1990s!

In addition, deregulation has pretty much put an end to any limits over what these "common carriers" do today. The result has been massive centralization in both the airline and railroad industry, along with massive price discrimination. We now only have five class I railroads in the US and one of them may be about to be purchased by a Canadian railroad. And four airlines have 2/3 of the market for air travel now.

[SRG]

I am sure that Thomas errs with lots of statements. That doesn't mean he can't find a majority to go along with him.

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[mad.casual]

It means that the transportation company has to charge you the published rates and not discriminate.

There were no common carriers at the time of the writing of the takings cause.

Not to disagree with your interpretation of Thomas, but both of these are conceptually, if not plainly, incorrect. Somewhat selectively anachronistic. The carrier status dates back to the Code of Hammurabi and dealt specifically with liability of the transportation service. Invoices, waybills, and receipts were stipulated, but pricing was not. Prior to “common carriers” in the US, were British “public carriers” less common in The Colonies, but well known in Britain since at least the 17th Century. You are correct that, in the intervening decades, various sovereign entities and trade guilds established riders in exchange for liability protections such as accurate pricing and standards of service, but none of this would be unheard of to the FF or early colonialists and the main reason why these things weren’t established earlier than was because the territory was under the rule of the Crown.

Bell invented the telephone almost 6 decades before the ’34 CA began making them common carriers. The fact that turnpikes, shipping, and rail didn’t become carriers sooner clearly has more to do with the novelty of the technology and the proximity to newly established self-governance/sovereignty than it does to any (lack of) conception about businesses serving the public.

Again, certainly not to say Thomas was correct, but accurate historical context, especially of common carriers contains significant implications somewhat outside Kelo.

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[Gaear Grimsrud]

And the condemnations are to facilitate a public road project not to build the plant itself. I'm not a fan of Kelo and I don't want to split hairs but I'm not sure this case is comparable.

[Carey Allison]

I think few argue with the state’s (State or Federal) right to take private land for a highway, or a damn/lake, or an airport, when the amount offered is enough to make the person from whom the land is taken “WHOLE”. Whole means that enough is paid to allow that individual to pay all taxes involved and have enough in his pocket to pay a willing seller for a similar property. (If the dispossessed owner doesn’t get that much, he has not been made whole.) When the state itself is set to reap a profit financially, directly or indirectly, from the taking of private land, you are going to get little relief from the state capital. And indeed, the S.C. should be leery about leaping in to usurp in yet another way the old concept of “states rights”.

So many times the ultimate decision maker regarding the use of imminent domaine (and for less than a price that will make the dispossessed in fact whole) is confident and comfortable in the notion that he can use the power of the state to take from A and give to B (how often with 10% for himself?) because he thinks he has no skin in the game. This will halt when the confidence of the “decision-makers” is disrupted and their comfort is upset by the realization that when they take from the wrong “A”, they will shortly and unwillingly have several square feet of skin in the game.

When the courts do not protect the weak from the powerful, and “justus” is for sale to the wealthiest, people will learn to seek other paths for either protection or retribution.

[charliehall]

Kelo stank, but the fact is that it is consistent with practice and understanding of eminent domain going back to colonial times. Without the ability to take your property and give it to some other private actor, the only way that any highway, railroad, pipeline, or electric transmission line would ever get built would be if the government did it itself. For example, most conservatives decried Biden cancelling the Keystone XL pipeline, a private project -- albeit one partly owned by the provincial government in Alberta, Canada. Overturn Kelo and there is no Keystone XL pipeline or any other privately owned pipeline project ever in America's future. The nutty far left crowd who are going all in to block every fossil fuel project would rejoice. So would the opponents of private toll roads.

One could try to create a public use exception to allow eminent domain for such purposes, but that would not have blocked these transportation improvements -- or the project a few years ago to build a new commuter train station next door to the privately owned Yankee Stadium (which is on city owned land for which the Steinbrenner family pays neither rent nor property taxes).

The real solution would be for elected officials to stop funding all this corporate welfare, but both the big businesses that benefit from the corruption, and the voters who think their local economies will improve, love this kind of largesse. As Walt Kelly wrote over 50 years ago, "We have met the enemy and he is us."

[markm23]

A public road is different from a railroad, which is different from a factory. It’s quite clear that a highway (which in the USA are always government projects) is a “public use”, not so clear for a privately-owned railroad, but it’s ridiculous and oppressive to use eminent domain to seize land for a factory. That’s private use. The courts were quite wrong on _Poletown_ and _Kelo_.

Besides, the builders could always choose a different site. That is often impractical for roads, railroads, pipelines, or electric transmission lines, but for factories and other buildings, eminent domain is not used to make the project possible, but to avoid the costs of paying landowners what they want for their land and working around hold-outs.

However, if the article reported accurately, this is _not_ a case of eminent domain being used for the factory site. It’s being used to expand a _public road_ to the factory site, and that’s well within the original meaning of the Takings Clause.

[Commenter_XY]

Kelo was decided 2005....and Lancaster just figured all this shit out now?

[I, Woodchipper]

Under the Kelo v. New London Supreme Court decision, a state can take private land to give to a private developer for almost any reason it wants.

The constitution is just there for the courts to back-fill in the reasoning on why you got fucked by the government and why ti was perfectly valid. that's it

[Dillinger]

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[Gaear Grimsrud]

I guess Joe doesn't give a shit if his grandkids die in the fiery Armageddon unleashed by global warming. We're gonna need a lot of electric cars with explosive batteries to save the planet.

[charliehall]

Gasoline engine vehicles are far more likely to catch fire. And the rates are not close. A study last year from autoinsuranceez, which works with the insurance industry, found fire rates of 3474.5 per 100,000 for hybrid vehicles, 1529.9 per 100,000 for gasoline vehicles, and 25.1 per 100,000 per electric vehicles. Gasoline vehicles have sixty times the rate of fires of electric vehicles!

I had a car catch fire on me once. A pinhole leak in the gasoline line caused it. There are so many things that need to work perfectly for a gasoline powered car not to catch fire that it is amazing that there aren't even more fires. Electric vehicles have many fewer things that can go wrong. The last longer and cost less to operate. Gasoline powered vehicles are going the way of the horse and buggy, as they should.

[mad.casual]

Gasoline engine vehicles are far more likely to catch fire. And the rates are not close. A study last year from autoinsuranceez, which works with the insurance industry, found fire rates of 3474.5 per 100,000 for hybrid vehicles, 1529.9 per 100,000 for gasoline vehicles, and 25.1 per 100,000 per electric vehicles. Gasoline vehicles have sixty times the rate of fires of electric vehicles!

Why would you say this? Do you think people can't plainly see your deception? My 9-yr.-old would understand and rightly question how hybrid fires both constitute the most fires *and* get divvied up into their own category.

Do you think people just assume Hybrid vehicles run on hamster power or did you do it so you can say gasoline-powered cars catch fire 6X more often when, in fact, the data clearly indicates that if a gasoline car catches fire, it's probably because of the electrical system.

I mean, if you were the least bit honest, you'd divide the hybrid fires evenly between gas and electric and still come out ahead but you dishonest dumbasses can't even do that.

I had a car catch fire on me once. A pinhole leak in the gasoline line caused it.

^Shit that didn't happen. Gasoline doesn't spontaneously combust. You can douse a lit match in it. Are you going to sit here and tell us all that a pinhole in the gas line set the car on fire but wasn't itself consumed in the fire? Why would you lie like that? Why not go all out and just tell us you troubleshot the problem while rolling down the road at 60 mph? As it stands you sound like Bridget Myonahan shrieking "Gasoline explodes you know!" at Will Smith in I, Robot.

[Don't look at me!]

You can douse a lit match in it.

Try it.

[mad.casual]

Try it.

Fair enough, I should be more clear. You can dowse a lit match in a pool of it. I can say that first hand, unless you’re like 8, it gets boring after the first couple times. However, a spray of it probably won’t dowse the match and will catch fire. To the point, it needs an ignition source.

[Carey Allison]

Thank you for clarifying that. I have been somewhat confused about the issue. Here, have another drink of Kool-Aide.

[TheReEncogitationer]

Mad is decidedly not a bright bulb.

[Mike Laursen]

Well that’s going to make electric cars more popular!

[Don't look at me!]

How so?

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[John Gall]

Kelo was ruling in error, like Scott and Plesy before it, and bad rulings don't make good law.

[Iwanna Newname]

Kelo, schmeelo. As some great defender of human rights once said, "If you want to make an omelet, you gotta breaks some eggs."

[Carey Allison]

So, good citizen, please hold still. We will, after cracking you, dump you gently into a mixing bowl. The beater will then be applied at high speed so the pain will be only momentary. And the omelet will be delicious (even though you might not be around to enjoy it).

[NoVaNick]

We know how this will end-the EV company will decide they don’t need to build a new plant, or not sell in the US, and the seized properties will sit vacant for years, or until Amazon decides to build more warehouses or data centers there.

[Don't look at me!]

Won’t be Amazon, they have empty buildings scattered all over.

[Fats of Fury]

A Vietnamese billionaire? Is this Pho news?

[Spiritus Mundi]

Pho is pronounced fa. Or so I've been told.

[TheReEncogitationer]

It's Pho-cked News if you ask me! Looks like one of the Viet Cong got a chance to do in Americans both in war and in peace, both over there and over here.

[TJJ2000]

Well when they find that missing Government-Owned means of production phrase in the Constitution let me know....

Until then; F'You [Na]tional So[zi]alists!!!

[TheReEncogitationer]

You can say "fuck" in the Comments.

[Alric the Red]

For the North Carolina factory, the company pledged to spend $4 billion and create 7,500 jobs within five years. In exchange, the state promised incentives totaling $1.2 billion, including $450 million toward site preparation; $400 million from Chatham County, where the facility would be located; and a $316 million grant over 32 years in which the company is reimbursed for the state income tax money its employees pay.

This is some pretty impressive incentives. I mean, how can the EV company refuse. That last line–about a $316 million grant over 32 years–is almost a complete guarantee against any failure. What’s impressive is the originality to the plan, of taking the state income tax money paid into the state by the employees of the EV company and giving it right back to the company.

It’s clear that EVs are hear to say, and they’re now advertised, and I saw an advertisement just a couple of days ago in which Kevin Bacon was charging one and bragging that it was fast charging, and would get a full charge in 18 minutes. This is an industry that could maybe save us. And with the current push to stateside manufacturing of chips, this is all moving in the right direction.

As for the question of imminent domain, I was reading some of the other comments, and some were quite nuanced. I was convinced at the end of reading them–far more than the the discouraging tone of the article–that it qualifies as imminent domain. It differs from the previous famous case in that their not seizing the land as a site for the factory; they’re seizing the land for the expansion of the road to the factory. It makes perfect sense.

[Anastasia Beaverhausen]

Eminent, hon... not "imminent".

[TheReEncogitationer]

"Hon?". Are you from Maryland?

[Johnathan Galt]

The EV market cannot possibly "save us" from anything at all. We already have cars, this merely exchanges one type for another.

The current generation (LiIon batteries) will never be more than toys for the rich. They will be usurped by something like Influit Energy's products made entirely domestically with no rare/expensive elements and able to charge as fast as refueling a gas car.

[PGrossjr]

Politicians are such suckers! These deals rarely achieve the results that the decision is based on. And there is plenty of vacant land in NC, don't understand the need to evict people.

[Crackers Boy]

Thankfully, for the state, the delay in getting the factory started will create uncertainty in the real estate market and lower the value of the houses and businesses that will be displaced. That will save NC some money making the residents "whole".

CB

[diver64]

I live in NC and have heard multiple stories on this new factory but have never heard mention of seizing homes and a church to get this Chimera built.

[TheReEncogitationer]

Sadly, the church part may be the only thing to wake up our fellow North Staters. The strongest argument most protesters will muster is: " It is our sincerely-held religious belief that this factory should not be built..."

[Liberty Lover]

Scott Walker did that for the Foxconn project in Wisconsin, it turned out great, for Foxconn, not so good for Wisconsin taxpayer though. And not so good for Scott Walker, he lost to a liberal asshole fool Tony Evers. Now were stuck with Evers because the Dems figured out how to never lose another election.

[Johnathan Galt]

Eminent domain is one of the most abused circumventions of due process in our country. "Just compensation" should never be simply "market price." Other factors, such as how long the land has been held (i.e. is this a family farm, or did a politically connected speculator buy it in hopes of making a profit from taxpayers?); what will it truly take for the current landowners to re-locate, including lost business and the value of their time, etc. should be far larger elements of the compensation. In many cases, these additional costs could be as high as 5 times what the "fair market price" currently is, and owners should be compensated accordingly.

Emminent domain is only supposed to be exercised for "extreme need" - and if such need truly exists, it should come bearing a real premium to those inconvenienced by the probably-fictional "public good" they cloak themselves in.