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Eminent Domain

Federal Court Rules Against Rhode Island Town's Use of Eminent Domain for NIMBY Purposes

The local government sought to use eminent domain to block a housing project local NIMBYs objected to.

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Rhode Island Taking Case | Pacific Legal Foundation
Rhode Island property targeted for condemnation to prevent construction of affordable housing on the site. (PLF). (Pacific Legal Foundation)
Rhode Island property targeted for condemnation to prevent construction of affordable housing on the site. (PLF).

 

Last year, I wrote about SCLS Realty v. Town of Johnston, a case where property owners challenged a Rhode Island town's plan to use eminent domain as a tool for blocking a housing project opposed by local NIMBYs. A few days, ago a federal district court invalidated the use of eminent domain there. But not on the "public use" grounds discussed in my 2025 post. Rather, the Court ruled that the Town was never delegated the authority to use eminent domain for this kind of purpose in the first place. In Rhode Island (as in other states) eminent domain is a power of the state government, and localities can only wield it in so far as the state legislature authorizes them to do so.

Robert Thomas of the Pacific Legal Foundation (the public interest law firm that represented the property owners) has a helpful and more detailed summary of the court's ruling at the Inverse Condemnation blog.

NOTE: PLF is also my wife's employer. But she has no involvement in this case and does not work on property rights issues.

Ilya Somin is Visiting Professor of Law at the University of Virginia, Professor of Law at George Mason University, Simon Chair in Constitutional Studies at the Cato Institute, and author of Free to Move: Foot Voting, Migration, and Political Freedom, Democracy and Political Ignorance: Why Smaller Government is Smarter, and The Grasping Hand: Kelo v. City of New London and the Limits of Eminent Domain.