Voters in Weare, NH rejected the symbolic attempt to seize Justice Souter’s house in retribution for Souter’s vote last year in Kelo.
Originally, the ballot measure called for the seizure of Souter’s home so that it could be turned into an inn called the Lost Liberty Hotel. But at a town meeting in February, residents of this town of 8,500 watered down the language.Voters decided 1,167 to 493 in favor of the reworded measure that asked the Board of Selectmen not to use their power of eminent domain to take the farmhouse, and instead urged New Hampshire to adopt a law that forbids seizures of the sort sanctioned by the Supreme Court.
Of course, not even the most rabid libertarian ever thought that Souter’s farmhouse would become the Lost Liberty Hotel. But there’s real merit in symbolism sometimes, and the publicity stunt galvanized opposition to eminent domain abuse. States are finally acting to keep developer-beholden local governments from handing private property to other private parties. The issue wasn’t ever whether Weare would take Souter’s house, but whether Weare could be stopped from taking Souter’s house if a developer came in and made large campaign contributions to Weare’s Selectmen. That effort seems to be working, although many of the “solutions” still have too many loopholes.
