Homeowners Rights

Sell your home, or the state will take it. That was the choice given to many Georgia families, as the utility giant Georgia Power moved to acquire more than 300 parcels of land for a new transmission line built largely to feed data centers.^[1]

Ansley Brown's childhood home sits in the path of that line. Her mother recently agreed to sell. Had she refused, Brown said, the company could have moved to take the property through eminent domain, the legal power that lets private land be seized, with compensation, for a purpose the government deems public.^[1]

"To us it's theft. It's literally a billion dollar company stealing land from smaller people, people who can't fight back. We don't have the money to fight Georgia Power."

— Ansley Brown, to CBS News, July 2026^[1]

By Georgia Power's own estimate, 70 to 80 percent of the electricity carried on the new line will serve data centers. The remaining 20 to 30 percent will serve everyone else.^[1] Families are being asked to surrender the land their parents and grandparents worked for so that a handful of big tech firms can train larger models.

Utilities frequently decline to disclose which corporate customers a project actually serves, as Georgia Power did when it refused to name the data center clients behind its transmission line, citing security.^[1]

Legal Context

The Georgia case is not isolated. Across the country, private companies armed with government-granted condemnation power are using it against homeowners, farmers, and ranchers to build the infrastructure of the data economy.^[2][3]

The Fifth Amendment permits the taking of private property only "for public use," and only with "just compensation." For most of American history, "public use" meant what it says: roads, bridges, courthouses, public works the whole community could use.

That changed in 2005. In Kelo v. City of New London, the Supreme Court's controversial 5-4 decision held that a city could seize the homes of ordinary citizens and transfer the land to a private developer, because the promise of new jobs and higher tax revenue counted as a "public purpose." Justices O'Connor, Scalia, Thomas, and Chief Justice Rehnquist dissented. Justice O'Connor, in dissent, warned exactly where this would lead:

"Any property may now be taken for the benefit of another private party, but the fallout from this decision will not be random. The beneficiaries are likely to be those citizens with disproportionate influence and power in the political process, including large corporations and development firms."^[4]

Justice Clarence Thomas put it more bluntly still: "Though citizens are safe from the government in their homes, the homes themselves are not."^[4] The Kelo decision proved so unpopular that 47 states moved to strengthen their protections and 12 amended their constitutions.^[5]

Protecting Homeowner's Rights

Ending this abuse of homeowners does not require abolishing eminent domain, as genuine public works still need it. It requires restoring the word "public" to its plain meaning and closing the doors through which private interests have entered. The American Whig calls for the following reforms at the state and local level:

1. Bar private-benefit takings by statute and by constitutional amendment. Property may be condemned for genuinely public infrastructure, not for private usage. States that amended their constitutions after Kelo have shown this is achievable.
2. Shift the burden of proof onto the condemning party. The utility or developer, not the homeowner, should have to prove in open court that a taking is truly for public use, with no presumption in its favor.
3. Guarantee attorney fees and appraisal costs to property owners who win a higher award. A right you cannot afford to enforce is not a right. Owners should never have to choose between a lowball offer and financial ruin.
4. Require full disclosure of the private beneficiaries of any project. If a transmission line exists chiefly to power named corporations, the public and the courts are entitled to know it before a single home is condemned.
5. End the revolving door on public utility commissions. Regulators should serve the ratepayers, with cooling-off periods that prevent commissioners from moving directly between the industries they oversee and the boardrooms they enrich.

This Land is Our Land

A citizen who can be removed from their land at the convenience of the largest corporation in the county is not fully free. A community whose homes can be seized is not fully self-governing.

The protection of homeowners' rights is a central pillar of the Homestead Initiative. The Initiative pairs homeowners rights with a tax on absentee foreign property ownership, with the revenues going to a first-time homebuyers program and community reinvestment.

Land in America ought to be owned and worked on by people with a stake in their local community. Not by foreign oligarchs, royal family members, and multinational corporations.

~ American Whig, 14th July 2026