Hawaii Housing Authority v. Midkiff - Supreme Court Rules That Public Purpose, Not Public Use, Determines Constitutionality Of A Government Taking Of Land

By a vote of 8-0, the Court upheld the constitutionality of the act. Writing for the Court, Justice O'Connor stated that even when land is turned over to private hands under the act, without ever having been used by the public, the requirement of the Public Use Clause is met. What matters, she stated, is not the use of the property, but the purpose of the taking:

To be sure, the Court's cases have repeatedly stated that "one person's property may not be taken for the benefit of another private person without justifying public purpose, even though compensation be paid." . . . But where the exercise of eminent domain power is rationally related to a conceivable public purpose, the Court has never held a compensated taking to be proscribed by the Public Use Clause.

O'Connor added that the state's power of eminent domain is so broad that its scope equals that of the state police power, which permits states and localities to restrict individual rights in order to promote the public welfare. And courts should defer to legislative determinations of what constitutes a public use of land unless there is no rational relationship between the taking and the government purpose that motivated it. Midkiff was a unanimous decision by the Court, which spoke with one voice through Justice O'Connor. Because of this rare unanimity and because of the clear language of the opinion, Midkiff seems to have done away with the concept of public use as a limitation on government takings.