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July 1, 2005
Republican Lawmakers Fire Back at Judiciary
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
WASHINGTON, June 30 - Stepping up their assault on the federal judiciary, Congressional Republicans announced efforts on Thursday directed at overturning two recent Supreme Court decisions, one that allowed government to claim private property for economic development and another that stripped Kentucky courthouses of the Ten Commandments.
"This Congress is just not going to sit by and let an unaccountable judiciary make these kinds of decisions," said Representative Tom DeLay of Texas, the House Republican leader.
At a news conference, Mr. DeLay called the property ruling a "George Orwell novel of a court decision."
Mr. DeLay appeared with members of the House and Senate who are proposing bills to sharply restrict the government's power of eminent domain.
Hours after he spoke, the House voted 231 to 189 to approve a measure that would prohibit federal financing for property seizures. Speaker J. Dennis Hastert of Illinois praised the move, an amendment to a spending bill covering transportation and housing, as "an important first step" to protecting private property, though it was not clear if the measure would survive in the Senate.
Illustrating the broad discontent in the House over the court ruling on property rights, House members voted 365 to 33 late Thursday night in support of a resolution expressing "grave disapproval" at the court decision.
Earlier in the day, Representative Ernest Istook, Republican of Oklahoma, stood on the Supreme Court steps to announce a constitutional amendment, backed by 109 House members, including 5 Democrats, that would protect references to God on public property.
"This amendment will protect displays of the Ten Commandments, in Kentucky as well as in Texas," Mr. Istook said in a prepared statement. "It will protect the words 'under God' in the Pledge of Allegiance. It will protect the ability for schoolchildren to pray at school, individually or together. It will protect our national motto of 'In God we trust.' "
The moves reflect a growing discontent among conservatives with the federal judiciary, which has angered them with rulings on hot-button topics like same-sex marriage and end-of-life care. Earlier this year, Congress passed legislation in a direct challenge to the judiciary, directing a court to review the case of Terri Schiavo, the Florida woman who died after her feeding tube was withdrawn by court order.
Passions grew even more intense this week, with the court's decisions on the Ten Commandments and eminent domain. In twin rulings that Mr. DeLay later characterized as confusing and hypocritical, the court allowed a monument of the Ten Commandments to remain outside the Texas Capitol, but ruled that copies of the Ten Commandments could not remain hanging in the corridors of two Kentucky courthouses.
In the eminent domain case, the court cleared the way for New London, Conn., to proceed with a plan to replace a faded residential neighborhood with offices for research and development, a conference hotel, new homes and a pedestrian "riverwalk." The project is to be leased and built by private developers.
On the day of the ruling, Representative Steve King, Republican of Iowa, introduced an amendment to an appropriations bill seeking to strip $1.5 million from the Supreme Court's budget. The move was a symbolic protest, Mr. King said then, against "the injustice done to the 15 property owners in the case."
The bills that try to overturn the ruling would achieve that goal in different ways. In the House, Representative F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., Republican of Wisconsin and chairman of the Judiciary Committee, is proposing to withhold federal financing from projects in which municipalities try to take private property for economic development. The measure would also bar the federal government from using its right of eminent domain to claim private property for economic development.
In the Senate, John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, is proposing legislation that declares the power of eminent domain available only for "public use" and says such use cannot be construed to include economic development.
