No, a card game can’t stop Trump’s wall

Makers of ‘Cards Against Humanity’ are set to lose

By now you’ve perhaps played a rousing game of Cards Against Humanity or at least heard that the game makers want to buy land to block the construction of President Trump’s proposed border wall between the U.S. and Mexico.

The raunchy game, in which people fill in the blank or complete sentences with terrible — but often funny — concepts, pulls a holiday marketing stunt every year. Last year, Cards Against Humanity raised money to dig a hole. Before that, it mailed people boxes filled with actual bull excrement.

This year, the makers asked for $15 from customers to buy a large plot of land along the U.S.-Mexico border for their “Cards Against Humanity Saves America” campaign. The promotion already sold out.

A marketing video implies they would separate acres of land into tiny pieces for each participant, in order to hold the government up in court for years. They want to make the push to build a wall time-consuming and expensive by hiring lawyers to keep the land tied up in court, according to the website.

The only problem: That’s not how eminent domain works.

“This is a way for them to utilize their popularity with an audience most people assume are either indifferent toward political issues or at the very least unsophisticated about how things get done,” said Steve Silva, an eminent domain and land use attorney for Fennemore Craig law group in Reno. He has actually used eminent domain to build a wall.

“It’s got a lot of people literally buying into this issue of significant public importance,” he said.

The Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution allows the federal government to take property from people for “just compensation.” The amendment favors the government’s ability to take while also protecting an owner’s right to make money, meaning property owners must be paid fair-market value.

Determining value is what usually ends up taking years in court, Silva said. The actual taking of the property takes very little time.

“It’s a two-step process: First thing is that the government has to prove it has the right to take the property,” he said. “Once it establishes that, it can take it immediately.”

The federal government need only establish that the land will be used for the public, such as for a large wall owned by the government. Then it can basically take that acreage and start building the wall while fighting out the value in court.

“Congress can also just pass a special bill to take land,” Silva said. “They’ve done that for national parks before. Finally, the U.S. Supreme Court has noted that the U.S. can just seize land summarily by occupying it and ousting the former owner.”

So the game makers may end up fighting the government for years after the wall is finished.

AMAZON.COM The makers of the R-rated party game “Cards Against Humanity” are hoping to be a thorn in President Trump’s side.