Last month, I wrote about a major eminent domain struggle in National City, California. City officials had decided to declare almost seven hundred properties blighted even before conducting any sort of blight study, which eventually turned out to be riddled with errors.

At the center of the fight is a private, nonprofit boxing gym that has helped keep hundreds of at-risk kids in school and off the streets. The city wanted to bulldoze the center so a wealthy developer can build luxury condos and stores.

In 2007, the Institute for Justice teamed up with the gym and filed suit to stop the city from taking the property, and here’s video about their legal fight:

Four years later, IJ scored a knockout blow against eminent domain abuse: Last Thursday, the Superior Court of California struck National City’s entire 692-property eminent domain zone and found that National City lacked a legal basis for its blight declaration. 

This is a major victory for California property owners, and the first case to apply the property reforms that the state enacted to counter the 2005 Kelo decision. Learn more about the victory here.

I previously wrote about eminent domain shenanigans here and you can read more from Cato on property rights here.