Top law-enforcement officers across America look to Supreme Court to affirm their rights

The top law-enforcement officers from multiple states have joined with a group of North Dakota ranchers in a fight before the U.S. Supreme over a ruling that, if left unchanged, creates a huge threat to states’ rights.

Under the Constitution, those powers not specifically delegated are left to states to decide and manage.

Take, for example, the fact that California for years has demanded car emissions lower that the federal requirements, essentially imposing a nationwide mandate on car manufacturers.

This fight is over a judge’s ruling that threw out state law on the issue of the condemnation of private land for a private use – a pipeline.

“The case of North Dakota rancher Len Hoffmann and a small group of his neighbors attracted major support as the attorneys general from 12 states weighed in with the Supreme Court asking it to hear the case in the coming term,” explained the Institute for Justice.

“The McKenzie County ranchers fought for years to obtain a fair price for their land, and they prevailed. They won—but then a federal appeals court told them that they would have to pay the cost of that three-year fight themselves, forking over a significant chunk of the sales price of their land.”

The legal team explained under state law property owners generally can’t be forced to pay for the costs of their own condemnation.

A federal appeals court, however, disregarded that requirement for the condemnation proceedings for a private pipeline.

“Now, the ranchers have joined with the Institute for Justice (IJ), which protects property rights nationwide, to ask the Supreme Court to hear the case,” explained the IJ.

Attorneys general from North and South Dakota, Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, Idaho, Louisiana, Nebraska, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas also have joined with the ranchers.

The IJ noted they “are concerned that the ruling is at odds with every other appeals court to consider the subject and ‘does injury to the traditional role held by states in our federalist system for securing real property interests…'”

All other federal cases have found that private pipeline companies must follow state law when compensating landowners for property taken for pipelines.

“Len and his fellow ranchers have always said that this fight was about more than them,”” said IJ attorney Matt Liles. “Seeing a dozen different states weigh in on their side confirms that their fight is about protecting property owners across the country, and they’re determined to do exactly that.”

It is the Owners’ Counsel of America, a nationwide property-rights nonprofit, that has warned the federal ruling now being challenged could end up destroying “a massive swath of property rights nationwide.”