Here's A Switch: VA, WV Landowners Challenge Pipeline Eminent Domain As "Taking"

[hatrack]

Virginia and West Virginia residents opposed to the Mountain Valley Pipeline asked a court in Roanoke, Virginia, to block federal regulators from allowing the pipeline’s developers to confiscate private property to build the 303-mile natural gas pipeline.

In a lawsuit filed Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Virginia, the residents challenge the authority of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to allow a private company like Mountain Valley Pipeline, LLC, to confiscate property through eminent domain to build such a project. The residents also are seeking a preliminary injunction so that — even if the FERC grants the company final permission to build the pipeline — the company would not be allowed to use eminent domain until this suit is decided.

“Today marks an important day not only for landowners in the path of the Mountain Valley Pipeline but for all Americans, for every citizen in Virginia, West Virginia, and across the United States that values our constitutional right to be secure in our property,” Justin Lugar, an attorney for the law firm Gentry Locke, which filed the case, said in a statement.

The plaintiffs contend that granting Mountain Valley Pipeline the authority to use eminent domain would violate the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution, which requires that private property may only be taken “for public use” and that “just compensation” must be paid.

EDIT

https://thinkprogress.org/landowners-file-lawsuit-over-use-of-eminent-domain-942679e7e040

[atreides1]

1. Wow

Some group should take a poll of those residents!

1. Do you support the use of eminent domain to build a wall on the US/Mexico border?

2. Do you support the Standing Rock resistance to the building of a pipeline?

3. Are you for or against the XL pipeline?

[Phoenix61]

2. Funny what happens when things get personal

I've seen many people not "get it" until it happens to them. Nothing like personal experience to gain a little empathy.

[hatrack]

3. "But . . . but . . . but . . .but!!!!"

Lots of that going around these days.

[Nay]

4. It is, isn't it? People are so myopic and vindictive that they can't even see that

the stuff they LOVE to see happen to "others" like liberals, pesky Indians, brown people, etc., can happen to THEM just as easily. It truly is a massive, tragic (and, IMHO, terminally fatal) flaw in the human race.

[tazkcmo]

5. NIMBY!!!!

It's Eminent Domain when our government takes American Native's land but white peoples' land? Outrageous! A-holes

[williesgirl]

6. Why assume all of these landowners supported other pipelines?

Just because they live in VA & W. VA? That's a pretty broad brush you're using. Hopefully, this suit will result in helping everyone in the future if they're successful.