Property-rights lawyer to challenge Washington State chief justice

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports:

The conservative, heavy-spending home-builders' lobby helped put a staunch property-rights advocate on the Washington Supreme Court in 2004, and now it has an equally close ally running for another seat on the state's highest court.

John Groen, a Bellevue lawyer and one of the state's most prominent property-rights litigators, is challenging Chief Justice Gerry Alexander. In an interview Friday, Groen said he is running because of court rulings supported by Alexander that exemplify "an invasion of legislative power and a derogation of constitutional rights, essentially a rewriting of statutes."

Alexander, a Supreme Court justice since 1995 and a trial and appellate judge since 1973, said in an interview that in some of the decisions cited on the Web site of Groen's own law firm, "my views coincide with his." One was a case in which Alexander wrote a dissenting opinion supporting Groen's position.

Groen, 46, is expected to get heavy backing from the politically potent Building Industry Association of Washington. He is a member and past chairman of the BIAW's legal trust committee, and the association is a client of his Bellevue law firm, Groen, Stephens & Klinge, as are other builder interests.

Groen is a senior consulting attorney for the Pacific Legal Foundation, a non-profit, public interest law firm that litigates for property rights in land-use and environmental cases. He was a staff lawyer for the foundation before forming his law firm in 1996.

Some people take property rights seriously.