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PLF applauds Supreme Court decision to take important
Florida property rights case
STUART, Florida; June 15, 2009: Pacific Legal Foundation welcomed today’s announcement that the U.S. Supreme Court will hear a Florida property rights case with implications for the rights of property owners nationwide. The case is Stop the Beach Renourishment v. Florida Department of Environmental Protection. PLF’s amicus brief, urging the Supreme Court to take the case, is available at PLF’s Web site.
Steven G. Gieseler
PLF Managing Attorney |
At issue is the beach-restoration policy for Destin, Florida, and the action of the Florida Supreme Court in refusing to recognize the long-settled property rights of Florida beachfront landowners.
The plan by state and local officials would restore privately owned beach property that has been eroded by hurricanes and a tropical storm. But the government plan would restrict the property owners’ rights of ownership, essentially making the private beach public, once the eroded sand was replaced; but the landowners would receive no compensation.
In ruling on landowners’ challenge to this policy, the Florida Supreme Court not only declined to protect the property rights of the beach landowners, it aggressively undermined those rights by refusing to recognize the validity of a long-established state legal principle that a beachfront landowner enjoys direct access to the ocean.
By effectively nullifying this right of property owners, the state Supreme Court effected a “judicial taking” of a property right – a violation of the Fifth Amendment – on its own.
“The idea that government can seize effective ownership of private beach property under the guise of restoring that private beach, is an offense against basic property rights as guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution,” said Pacific Legal Foundation attorney Steven Geoffrey Gieseler. Gieseler, who is managing attorney of PLF’s Atlantic Center office in Stuart, Florida, submitted a friend-of-the-court brief urging the Supreme Court to take the case. “The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to hear this case is good news for anyone who owns property in Florida – and indeed, all property owners across the country. The case deals with a principle that is fundamental to everyone’s property rights: Government can’t take ownership of your land, whether through traditional eminent domain or a policy of ‘beach restoration,’ without compensating you.”
“In considering this case, the Florida Supreme Court essentially took away property rights on its own – engaging in a ‘judicial taking,’ in violation of the Fifth Amendment,” Gieseler continued. “This case is important because the U.S. Supreme Court is being asked to acknowledge that courts can violate the Fifth Amendment every bit as much as overzealous regulators can – and that they must be overruled when they do so.”
“For over 100 years in Florida, it had been a bedrock principle of law that the owner of property along the sea had the right to touch and access the ocean,” Gieseler explained. “When Florida embarked upon a program of reversing the effects of erosion, it decided to take away this right by suggesting that it never existed in the first place – and the state Supreme Court endorsed this confiscation of rights by refusing to recognize that the rights existed in the first place. On this issue, too, this case carries national implications: Government simply cannot be allowed to get away with saying that a property right never existed despite decades or even centuries of prior recognition of that right.”
About Pacific Legal Foundation and its Atlantic Center
Pacific Legal Foundation (www.pacificlegal.org) is the nation’s oldest and most successful public interest legal organization that litigates for limited government, property rights, and a balanced approach to environmental regulations, in courts nationwide. PLF’s Atlantic Center is located in Stuart, Florida. A brief video about PLF’s history and mission, including comments by former U.S. Attorney General Edwin J. Meese III, can be viewed at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnBSlRQwxKU.
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