Supreme Court asked to revisit eminent domain abuse

The issue of eminent domain abuse is very important to religious groups because they are often its target. As the Becket Fund pointed out years ago in its amicus brief in the notorious Kelo case, religious groups don’t create tax revenues for government and thus are considered less “useful.” This leads to pretextual takings for economic development or other reasons. Indeed, in a particularly egregious case, the Becket Fund once represented a California church that had its land taken so the city could hand it over to Costco and harvest property and sales taxes. The Becket Fund also represented an Albanian mosque in New Jersey that had its land seized, supposedly for “open space.” In both cases, federal courts rejected the takings and prevented the eminent domain abuse.