Georgia Judge Rules Railroad Company Can Seize Hundreds of Acres of Land In Predominately Black County to Benefit Private Sector, Landowners Vow to Appeal

A Georgia judge ruled last week that a short line railroad company can use eminent domain to seize land to build a spur line to serve private businesses in one of the state’s poorest, predominantly Black counties. 

The 15 property owners who have been fighting for two years to keep their land plan to appeal, and the judge, anticipating that, stayed an earlier ruling freezing any condemnation until the appeal is adjudicated.

The plaintiffs include Black and white residents of rural Sparta, a small town in Hancock County, who are trying to stop Sandersville Railroad Co., a 130-year-old, white family-owned business, from building a 4.5 mile rail spur that would run through land their families have owned for generations, some since the Civil War era.

Blaine Smith, a Black farmer and descendant of enslaved people, his wife Diane and his siblings have been leading the resistance to the railroad’s plans in order to preserve 600 acres of land acquired by his grandfather in the 1920s, land once used to cultivate cotton, fruits, and vegetables, and still used for timber farming, fishing and hunting, and where several family members have homes, reported Capital B.

The Smiths say a railroad running so close to their homes will be noisy and disrupt their peace and also pose potential damage to their property from hazardous products being transported on the tracks, and is likely to invite trespassers.

“We’re going to fight to keep this land,” Blaine Smith said. “It’s always somebody coming in and trying to bamboozle you out of it.”

Sandersville Railroad began making offers in 2022 to local residents who own the 18 parcels of land along the stretch where they seek to build the spur, which they say is needed to connect farmers and industries in east middle Georgia to larger railroads like CSXT Transportation and Norfolk Southern Railway Company, which can take their goods to markets throughout other parts of Georgia and the Eastern U.S..

Currently the Sandersville Railroad operates ten miles of mainline track and 25 miles of spurs within Georgia, according to court documents. In its first phase, the “Hanson Spur” would allow Sandersville to connect a rock mine known as the Hanson Quarry and owned by Heidelberg Materials to CSXT’s rail line in Sparta.

This would allow for shipments of granite, grain, timber, wood pulp and other raw materials from five local businesses along the spur to expand their market reach in a more cost-effective way than is currently possible relying on trucks to connect to rail.

Sandersville says the project would create 20 temporary construction jobs, a dozen permanent jobs averaging $90,000 a year in salary and benefits, boost tax revenues and bring in over $1.5 million annually to the economically depressed Hancock County, where the median household income is $33,000 and nearly a third of residents live in poverty.

Of the county’s 8,735 residents, 69 percent are Black and 29 percent are white, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

In its Hanson Spur plan, the railroad promises the new rail line would reduce existing truck traffic and run only one round trip per day along the spur, which would be 200 feet wide and follow a route designed to minimize impact on local rivers, creeks, wetlands and habitats of threatened species.

And in court filings, Sandersville claims the strips of railroad right-of-way needed for the spur make up no more than 7 percent of any one property owners’ total property, and would be located in areas a few to several hundred feet away from existing homes and structures.

Several residents took what the company describes as fair market offers for their property, but the owners of nine parcels rejected outright the idea of giving up any part of their land, an impasse leading Sandersville to pursue the seizure of those parcels through eminent domain.

“We’re not going to sit back and let Sandersville Railroad take land that has been in our family for generations, just so a rock quarry can ship rock faster, and so a few companies can increase their profits,” Blaine Smith told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (AJC) last year. “This property is more than just land to us — it is our heritage.

The conflict soon led to grassroots campaigns against the railroad’s plans organized by affected Hancock residents, including the No Railroad In Our Community Coalition, and eventually to two hearings at the Georgia Public Service Commission (PSC), a state agency that regulates companies providing natural gas, electricity, telecommunications and transportation.

“The American dream says if you play by the rules and work hard, justice will prevail and you will be rewarded,” Marvin Smith, a military veteran and Sparta native who owns part of the Smith family land, testified during one PSC hearing. “It never occurred to me … over 43 years of playing by the rules … I would end up in a position where my land could be taken through eminent domain.”

The five members of the commission unanimously approved the railroad’s plan to seize and develop the land last fall.

The case then landed in state court, where 15 plaintiffs represented by attorneys from the libertarian legal group Institute for Justice sued to stop the railroad from proceeding with the government-sanctioned land grab.

Among the legal questions at the center of the case are whether a privately owned railroad is considered under state and federal law a public utility, and if what it proposes serves a “public use” or “public purpose” that gives the company the right to seize real estate by right of condemnation if it cannot be acquired by purchase or gift.

The case could test previous rulings that have grown out of a landmark eminent domain case in 2005, Kelo v. City of New London, in which the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed, in a controversial 5-4 decision, the Connecticut city’s right to seize private land as part of an economic development plan as long as just compensation is offered — a redefinition of the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment. 

Since then state and federal district courts have determined that not just any kind of economic development can justify the taking of land; it must also serve a public purpose. In 2006, Georgia enacted the Landowner’s Bill of Rights, which revised and limited the power of eminent domain and specified that condemning private land solely for economic development purposes was prohibited.

Attorneys for the plaintiffs argued that the Hanson Spur is a “condemnation designed to principally benefit private interests, and does not satisfy the public use requirement.”

In his ruling on Feb. 4, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Craig L. Schwall, Sr. disagreed, upholding the previous decision by the public service commission that the rail spur is necessary to accommodate Sandersville’s business connecting industries to rail, including larger rail networks, and that the spur “provides for the function of a public utility” and also because it will “open a channel of trade” in east middle Georgia.

The property owners represented by the Institute of Justice said they plan to appeal this ruling directly to the Supreme Court of Georgia. 

“While today’s ruling is disappointing, we remain committed to proving to the courts that a private railroad’s desire to build a speculative new line entirely for the benefit of a handful of private companies is not a public use under the U.S. and Georgia constitutions and Georgia’s eminent domain laws,” said IJ Senior Attorney Bill Maurer in a statement. “We look forward to the Georgia Supreme Court’s review and we are thankful that our clients will not have to deal with Sandersville building tracks on our clients’ property until the higher court weighs in,”

“We’re going to fight until we can’t fight any more,” Diane Smith told Capital B. “I don’t want to leave any stone unturned.”

Sandersville Railroad President Ben J. Tarbutton III said in a statement that the company is pleased with Judge Schwall’s finding that the Hanson Spur “serves a public use for Middle Georgia” and aligns with other recent rulings that the spur is “a critical infrastructure project that will open new channels of trade for local businesses and serve the functioning of the railroad.”

“We understand some of the property owned by the Smith family is special to them given their heritage, and we regret that they may have felt that our initial offers, based on independent appraisals, were not adequate,” he said. “We would welcome the opportunity to re-engage in meaningful conversations about how both the landowners and Hancock County can benefit from the Hanson Spur. All property owners will be fully compensated for any land acquired using eminent domain.” He added that “No homes are to be condemned.”

A pending case in Hancock County Superior Court is evaluating the value of the remaining parcels the railroad seeks to condemn, which would determine their sales prices, noted the AJC.