BREAKING NEWS — READ IT HERE FIRST

The Missouri Supreme Court has reversed a lower court’s decision that would have allowed the City of Clayton to use eminent domain to aid the $200 million downtown expansion of Centene Corporation.

Today the high court ruled that neither Centene nor Clayton had sufficiently proved the affluent area is indeed blighted.

Noting that the state definition of “blighted area” requires that certain portions of the city “by reason of age, obsolescence, inadequate or outmoded design or physical deterioration have become economic and social liabilities,” the Court ruled today that the evidence of social liability was “insufficient.”

In a dissenting opinion, Justice Ronnie White, who is retiring next month, wrote “I respectfully dissent. In my view, Centene presented sufficient evidence from which the City of Clayton reasonably could have determined that the redevelopment area had become an “economic and social liability.”

Click here to read the ruling.