Hawaii Housing Authority v. Midkiff

In Midkiff, the Court essentially threw out the requirement that a government taking of property must be for public use; the state's power to condemn property, said the Court, is as broad as its extensive police power.

Hawaii was at one time a monarchy, in which a few major landholders owned most of the property in the islands. After Hawaii became a U.S. territory, and even after it gained statehood in 1959, landholdings remained concentrated in a few hands. In order to redistribute real estate, the Hawaiian legislature passed the Land Reform Act of 1967, which allowed the state to transfer land from lessors to lessees by using condemnation procedures. The Fifth Amendment to the Constitution authorizes government "takings" of private property so long as they are instituted for public use and the original owners receive just compensation.

The statute in question gave lessees of single family homes the right to invoke the state's power of eminent domain, or condemnation, in order to purchase the property they leased, even if the owner did not want to sell. After an initial public hearing to determine whether or not such a taking would "effectuate the public purposes" of the act, the Hawaii Housing Authority (HHA) would then purchase the land in question at a price set by condemnation trial or by a negotiation between the lessor and the lessee. The HHA would then sell the property to the lessees at the agreed price. If the lessors refuse to negotiate, the HHA was empowered to order that they submit to compulsory arbitration to determine the price at which the land would be sold.

When Frank E. Midkiff, as a land trustee, was ordered to participate in such arbitration, he declined, opting instead to file suit in federal district court. He asked that the land reform act be declared unconstitutional and the state prevented from proceeding to acquire his property. Instead, the district court granted HHA summary judgment, essentially throwing Midkiff's case out of court. Midkiff appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which agreed with his claim that the act violated the Fifth Amendment's Public Use Clause, made applicable to the states by the Fourteenth Amendment. HHA in turn appealed this ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court.