Kentuckian Donald Stites is trying to stop Sanitation District #1 from seizing his land via eminent domain for a sewage treatment plant. The catch: he’s got to post a $3m bond — what the District claims a delay will cost them — in order to get an appeals court hearing. If he loses the case, he loses the bond. Now, maybe some of y’all out there are multi-millionaires (and let me know if you are so I can install one of those Amazon tip-jars), but for the rest of us, a demand that you cough up that sort of cash before being allowed to avail yourself of the appeals process is, for practical purposes, like being required to teleport to an appeals court on the moon: it’s a de facto denial of due process. It also feels vaguely circular, since it requires Stites to “compensate” the district for blocking a “right” it hasn’t yet adequately established. Given that states periodically use eminent domain to hand land over to massive corporations (promoting “economic development” counts as a “public use,” you see…) I wonder whether Walmart can require citizens who fight that sort of grab to escrow the estimated revenue loss for each day a new store isn’t built. Or, for that matter, whether a court can rule someone the winner of a contested election because delay might question the legitimacy of his victory. Oh, wait…