Individual property rights are an integral part of what it means to be an American. In fact, the idea of personal property rights was a guiding principle that led to the creation of our nation more than 200 years ago. With this is mind, I recently joined a majority of my colleagues in the U.S. House of Representatives and voted for a bill that would prevent state and local governments from seizing private property for economic development projects.

This legislation was necessary because of a 2005 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that twisted the constitutional intent that eminent domain, which is defined as the ability of federal, state and local governments to take private property, apply only to land for public use projects.

In short, the Supreme Court ruling justified the government’s taking of private property and giving it to a private business to create a more lucrative tax base, which I found to be unacceptable. This ruling was extremely troubling in the way it interpreted the "takings clause" in the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution, which allows the government to seize property for public use, with just compensation. Typically, eminent domain is used to obtain property needed for things like highways or schools.

The legislation passed in the House is designed to provide Americans with the means to protect their property by limiting the government’s eminent domain authority. Specifically, the legislation would withhold for two years all federal development aid to states or locales that take private property for economic development. It also would bar the federal government from using eminent domain for economic development purposes and would give private property owners the right to take legal action if provisions of the legislation are violated.

For property owners, the good news is that this legislation, the Private Property Rights Protection Act of 2012, cleared the House with bipartisan support. The House passed similar legislation in November 2005, five months after the court ruling, but the bill did not advance in the Senate. It remains my hope that the Senate takes action on this bill in order to ensure that your constitutional property protections are preserved.