This Thursday, tens of millions of families will gather in private homes across America to celebrate Thanksgiving. The home is the largest financial asset for many Americans. Housing is one of the largest sectors of the economy. Despite its importance to the economy, the home where we gather this Thanksgiving is legally less secure than it was two years ago.

Consider the Thanksgiving gatherings in Riviera Beach, Fla. There the local city government has in recent years been threatening to condemn many middle-class homes to make way for a multibillion-dollar private development. Where one family celebrates Thanksgiving in 2006, a different family might celebrate Thanksgiving a few years hence, not as the result of a mutually beneficial financial transaction but as the result of government coercion.

Most transactions involve willing sellers and buyers. If the property owner is not eager for a transaction at one price, the buyer typically raises the price until the transaction takes place. These ordinary rules of buying and selling apply to real estate as well except when the local government threatens to use extraordinary governmental powers to compel a sale.

Property owners faced with a local government supporting a sale reasonably fear that the price of their property will likely decline if the government condemns it. Under the duress of the threat of government intervention, most property owners sell at distressed prices. Eminent domain, condemnation, zoning, and creation of new building codes are but some of the means local governments have to encourage unwilling property owners to sell.

Public sensibilities about the limits of government exercise of eminent domain powers for private development were disturbed last year when the Supreme Court in Kelo v. New London held by a 5-4 vote that the federal Constitution provides no protection to property owners against municipalities forcibly transferring their real estate to another private party. The Fifth Amendment apparently does not protect property owners from government confiscation for purely private purposes.

According to the Supreme Court majority, the courts cannot secondguess the reasoning of municipalities with respect to the basis for eminent domain. Creating jobs, expanding the tax base, and other sound-bite-generated reasons appear to be sufficient for any local exercise of eminent domain. Surprisingly, the Supreme Court, which for much of the past 70 years rarely found a dispute without an implicit federal interest even where the Constitution is silent, decided in Kelo to defer unconditionally to the judgments of municipalities with respect to the exercise of a power — the governmental taking of private property — specifically limited in the constitution.

The Supreme Court’s decision triggered a wave of voter initiatives for referendums or state constitutional amendments to limit the ability of municipalities to exercise eminent domain for purposes of private development. If the federal government would not limit abuses of eminent domain powers, each state could do so on its own. Although each differed slightly, ballot initiatives passed earlier this month in Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Oregon, and South Carolina. Altogether, 34 states have some limits on eminent domain abuse. But ballot initiatives, many broader than merely limiting the exercise of eminent domain, also failed in several states: California, Idaho, Montana, and Washington.

Last week, the City Council of Riviera Beach, Fla. voted unanimously to abide by a new state constitutional amendment restricting its authority to use eminent domain to compel current property owners to sell their homes for a private development. The mayor of the town, however, has threatened to challenge the applicability of the constitutional amendment to Riviera Beach.

This Thanksgiving, most Americans will enjoy homes that are secure from the threat of condemnation or forfeiture. But homeowners in Riviera Beach and other communities across America face a tyranny of a local majority: Local government that covets their private property and uses the guise of governmental power to seek to transfer that property to another. Against this local tyranny, property owners have no federal protection. States have the prerogative to pass laws and state constitutional amendments to prohibit private takings, but states also have the prerogative to decline to do so.

This year, we have much for which to be thankful. Perhaps next year, all Americans can also aspire to a home secure from private governmental takings.

A former FCC commissioner, Mr. Furchtgott-Roth is president of Furchtgott-Roth Economic Enterprises. He can be reached at hfr@furchtgott-roth.com