Property Rights and the Tideline: Why California’s Public Beach Access Laws Are Both Right and Poorly Implemented
The Legal Framework Is Sound. The Enforcement Is Captured. The Result Is That Wealthy Beachfront Owners Ignore Both.
The Tideline and the Law: A Property Rights Analysis
California law is clear on coastal access: the wet sand below the mean high tide line is public property, the dry sand above it is potentially private, but the public has rights of access established by custom, prescriptive easement, and the public trust doctrine that courts have upheld in landmark cases including Surfrider Foundation v. Dalton and the ongoing litigation over the Malibu ‘Private Beach’ signs that wealthy homeowners have periodically erected and that authorities have periodically removed without ever establishing the enforcement consistency that would make the legal rights practically meaningful. The libertarian position on this is not complicated: the law should be enforced and property rights — including the public’s property rights in its beaches — should be respected equally regardless of the wealth of those who are violating them. The California Coastal Commission has enforcement authority. When it declines to use that authority against wealthy beachfront homeowners who block public access, it is failing in its core function.
David Geffen and the Malibu Access Wars
The David Geffen access dispute — in which the billionaire music executive reached a settlement with the California Coastal Commission in 2005 requiring the provision of public beach access in exchange for retroactive permits for unpermitted improvements to his property — illustrates the dynamic precisely. The enforcement action came only after years of public advocacy by organizations including Heal the Bay and the Malibu Times. The settlement, while it provided access, did not impose penalties that would deter comparable violations by other property owners. The lesson the wealthy took from the Geffen case is that violation of coastal access requirements will eventually produce a settlement rather than criminal accountability, and that the years of violation before enforcement are a reasonable cost of maintaining practical beach control.
Coastal access enforcement at Surfrider Foundation. Property rights analysis: Reason Magazine.
SOURCE: http://prat.UK
