Your Land Is Your Land: Where I Stand on Property Rights and Eminent Domain

I bought my house in Rapid City in 2018, the same year a family court case brought my son here and I followed him. That house is the largest thing I own.

For most families in this district the math works the same way. The house is the savings account. It is the inheritance. It is the one piece of the world with your name on the deed. Which brings up the question that decides this whole issue: what happens when somebody holding government power decides they want what is yours?

The answer is supposed to be simple. Government can take private property only for a real public use, and it has to pay for it. A road, a school, a water line. That is the oldest deal in American property law.

A workaround grew up next to that deal, though. A private company calls itself a common carrier, and suddenly the power to take land is available for a private project. South Dakota has watched that model operate up close. It is the Summit Carbon CO2 pipeline model, and I stand with the landowners against it. Not against one pipeline. Against the model.

Your land is your land. Four commitments come out of that.

Revive the eminent domain amendment. HJR 5001 required a declaration of necessity and clarified what counts as public use before a taking. I will support filing it again in 2027.

Ban deceptive easement practices and end the common carrier workaround that lets private projects borrow government power.

Restrict warrantless drone surveillance of private property. If the state wants to look at your backyard from the air, it can go get a warrant, and the same logic applies to the license plate camera networks I have written about separately.

Stand with landowners every time the next version of this shows up.

What HJR 5001 would do

In plain English: before land can be taken, somebody has to put a declaration of necessity on the record stating why the taking is needed, and public use gets defined tightly enough that private gain cannot wear it as a costume.

That is the entire amendment. It does not end eminent domain for roads, schools, or public infrastructure. It ends the pretending.

The House passed it sixty-two to five on January 27, 2026, which is about as close to unanimous as Pierre ever gets. Then the Senate defeated it fourteen to nineteen on March 3, and it never reached the ballot. I would have voted yes.

Here is what changed, and it is the reason this plank reads differently than it did in the spring. For a while this was the one item where you did not need to send anybody to Pierre, because the amendment was headed for your ballot. It is not headed there anymore. Sixty-two House members voted yes and the thing still died five weeks later. That is the gap between saying you support property rights and finishing the job. I will support filing it again in 2027, and I would vote yes the day it reaches the floor.

Why the constitution and not just a statute

Statutes bend. They get amended, weakened, and lawyered session after session, and the common carrier workaround is itself proof of how creative that lawyering gets.

The constitution sits where lobbyists cannot reach it. Only voters can change it. A right this basic belongs at that altitude.

Two things I am asking

Back the eminent domain amendment when it is filed again in 2027 this November. Then send people to Pierre who will finish the rest: ban the deceptive easement practices, end the common carrier workaround, and put a warrant between government surveillance and your property.

I did not come to property ownership as an investor. I came to it as a dad who needed a house near his son. Eight years on, I know exactly what that deed means to my family and I have a good idea what yours means to you.

Four objections come up on this plank and my answers are below. The full platform is at zac4sd.com.

Strong Families. Strong South Dakota.