The Specter of Future Blight: State Approaches to Speculative Takings

Дата публикации: 09-07-2026 22:36:02

This Comment creates the first comprehensive taxonomy of state eminent domain regimes’ treatment of private-to-private takings for the purpose of preventing future blight. Following the Supreme Court’s expansion of the Public Use Clause in Kelo v. City of New London, many states moved to limit takings justified solely by economic development yet maintained broad blight statutes that continued to authorize the condemnation of property to eliminate or prevent blight. This Comment exposes the indeterminate contours of the future-blight takings landscape and ultimately urges state legislatures and courts seeking to cabin sweeping public use determinations to find the prevention of future blight an invalid public use.
This Comment proceeds in three parts. First, it traces the Supreme Court’s eminent domain jurisprudence, highlighting the Court’s expansive conception of the Fifth Amendment’s public use requirement and its tradition of deference to legislative determinations defining its scope. Second, it develops a taxonomy of state eminent domain regimes, distinguishing among the most restrictive and least restrictive models before examining those that occupy a middle ground: states that generally limit economic development takings while retaining malleable and imprecise blight standards capable of authorizing future-blight takings. Finally, it analyzes pertinent case law and contends that courts seeking to narrow broad interpretations of the public use requirement should reject the future blight rationale.
While legal scholars have long cautioned that takings on the basis of present blight are susceptible to manipulation by condemning authorities, the future blight rationale affords governments an even more elastic mechanism for taking private property—shifting the inquiry from existing conditions to predictive judgments about potential decline. Fundamental property rights principles, the unduly speculative nature of future blight determinations, and the disproportionate burdens likely to fall on vulnerable communities counsel against the permissibility of future blight takings.

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