The Michigan State Supreme Court has made a landmark reform of their state’s eminent domain law:

Reversing more than two decades of land-use law, the Michigan Supreme Court late Friday overturned its own landmark 1981 Poletown decision and sharply restricted governments such as Detroit and Wayne County from seizing private land to give to other private users.

The unanimous decision is a decisive victory for property owners who object to the government seizing their land, only to give it to another private owner to build stadiums, theaters, factories, housing subdivisions and other economic development projects the government deems worthwhile.

Detroit and other municipalities have used the Poletown standard for years to justify land seizures as a way to revitalize.

In the decision, the court rejected Wayne County’s attempt to seize private land south of Metro Airport for its proposed Pinnacle Aeropark high-technology park. The Pinnacle project, announced in 1999, is geared to making Wayne County a hub of international high-tech development linked to the airport.

[…]

In the original Poletown ruling, the court allowed the City of Detroit to seize private homes and businesses on the east side so General Motors Corp. could build an auto factory. The bitterly contested seizures and the court’s ruling in favor of the city had national implications and led to similar rulings elsewhere.

Thousands of homes and dozens of churches and private businesses were bulldozed in Detroit’s former Poletown neighborhood to make way for the GM plant.

Of 1,300 acres needed for Wayne County’s Pinnacle project, property owners representing about 2 percent of the land have refused to sell. They have resisted, in part because much of the project would later be turned over to private developers and other entities.

In Friday’s decision, known as Wayne County v. Hathcock after one of the landowners in the case, the court ruled that the sweeping powers to seize private land granted in the 1981 Poletown case violated the state’s 1963 constitution.

“The county is without constitutional authority to condemn the properties,” the court’s opinion read. All seven justices voted to overturn Poletown, although three dissented over some technical aspects that do not affect the main ruling.

Justice Robert Young, who wrote the lead opinion, called the 1981 case allowing Detroit’s Poletown neighborhood to be cleared for a GM plant a “radical departure from fundamental constitutional principles.”

“We overrule Poletown,” Young wrote, “in order to vindicate our constitution, protect the people’s property rights and preserve the legitimacy of the judicial branch as the expositor, not creator, of fundamental law.”

While this applies only to the state of Michigan, I intend to study it, with the intention of introducing an inititive to stop redevelopment seixures for private use. That has resulted in thousands of poor or lower middle-class homeowners having to wurrender their propery, with less than equitable compensation, only to see it then turned over to wealthy developers at subsidized prices.

hat tip: Instapundit