The Columbia Spectator, the student newspaper of Columbia University has a story about Tuck-It-Away, Inc. v. New York State Urban Dev. Corp., No. 10-402 (cert. petition filed Sep. 21, 2010), the case about the New York State Urban Development Corporation's attempt to take property for a new Columbia campus, which is up for consideration by the U.S. Supreme Court at today's conference.
In U.S. Supreme Court to consider hearing M'ville case, the Spectator quotes the property owners and their lawyer:
At stake are the only properties in the expansion zone—from 125th to 134th streets, from Broadway to 12th Avenue—that Columbia does not yet own: Nick Sprayregen’s four Tuck-It-Away Self-Storage locations and two gas stations owned by Gurnam Singh and Parminder Kaur. Under eminent domain, the state would turn the properties over to the University in exchange for market-rate compensation for Sprayregen, Singh, and Kaur."The significance is huge," Norman Siegel, who is Sprayregen’s attorney and the former director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said on Thursday. "If they decide to hear our case, then the issue will be front and center before the Supreme Court of the United States."
Singh and Kaur have argued that their business is their livelihood and should not be taken from them.
"I need a fair deal from the Supreme Court," Kaur said on Thursday. "The way the law is now, rich people can do what they want to do—they can do anything. If the decision goes for the rich people, for Columbia, then in the future, poorer people will not have the right to live."
For Sprayregen, it is also about fighting the state on principle.
"It is a tremendous feeling of violation, it really is," Sprayregen said in an interview with Spectator last month. "You’re being violated by the very government that’s supposed to protect your rights but instead is merely doing the bidding of the highest bidder, so to speak."
Read the entire article here. The briefs in the case are posted here.
