U.S. Supreme Court: Who owns the beach?

WASHINGTON – Oct. 23, 2009 – On Dec. 2, the United States Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Stop the Beach Renourishment v. Florida, a national property rights petition. The Orlando firm of GrayRobinson is representing the Coalition for Property Rights (CPR).

GrayRobinson, P.A. attorneys Menelaos Papalas and Sidney Ansbacher filed an amicus curiae brief with the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of CPR in August 2009. CPR is made up of a small group of beachfront property owners.

The case involves property owners along 6.9 miles of beaches in Walton County and Destin in Okaloosa County. Because their properties border the ocean, CPR claims they have “littoral” rights, which includes the right to benefit from the slow natural process of the beach widening over time. As part of the beach re-nourishment project, which is authorized under Florida’s “Beach and Shore Preservation Act,” the state added sand to the beach because it was “critically eroded.”

Florida then declared that it owns the new stretch of beach, which changes the boundaries of the properties. If the state owns the new stretch of beach, the homeowners’ property boundaries don’t go to the ocean as they once did – they now end on a public beach. Instead of having oceanfront property, they now have what is considered ocean view property. And, as a public beach, the homeowners cannot exclude others from using the now state-owned land.

The case has gained national attention because of the implications it could have on future property rights cases. It will also be the nation’s first glimpse of private property rights decisions made by new Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

“If Florida is permitted to ignore property rights – using the pretext of beach re-nourishment to accomplish its real goal of taking a private beach and turning it public – then other states will follow suit,” says Papalas. “The Court now has the chance to define how it will treat private property rights for years to come.”