Posted on 06/17/2010 10:15:02 AM PDT by Red Badger
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that Florida can undertake beach-widening projects without paying beachfront property owners who lose exclusive access to the water.
The court, by an 8-0 vote, rejected a challenge by six homeowners in Florida's Panhandle who argued that a beach-widening project changed their oceanfront property into oceanview. Justice John Paul Stevens took no part in the case in which the court affirmed an earlier ruling.
Private property advocates had hoped the court would rule for the first time that a court decision can amount to a taking of property.
The court's four conservatives — Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas — were prepared to rule that way, even though the homeowners still would have lost in this case, Scalia said in his opinion for the court. But they lacked a fifth vote.
The Constitution requires governments to pay "just compensation" when they take private property for public use.
The homeowners said a Florida Supreme Court ruling in favor of the erosion-control project "suddenly and dramatically changed" state law on beach property and caused their property values to decline. The homeowners wanted the state to pay them undetermined compensation for "taking" their property, which Florida law had long recognized as extending to the water line at high tide.
The Florida decision ratified the designation of the new sand along nearly seven miles of storm-battered beach that stretches through the city of Destin and neighboring Walton County as public property, depriving the homeowners of the exclusive beach access they previously enjoyed.
Stevens sat out the case, presumably because he owns an apartment in an oceanfront building in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla. The area has been slated for an erosion-control project similar to the one in the high court case.
(Excerpt) Read more at google.com ...
Eventually more sand would come along, get piled up and the property would be extended out to the old waterline, and maybe beyond.
BEACHES MOVE!
Property lines don't. Obviously there will always be legal conflict over these two quite different phenomena.
“The court’s four conservatives — Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas — were prepared to rule that way, even though the homeowners still would have lost in this case, Scalia said in his opinion for the court. But they lacked a fifth vote”
That doesn’t make sense.
I went to the Supreme Court web site and read the summary of the decision.
Long and short of it- the person writing this article should be beaten severly with a computer keyboard, then given Crayons to play with.
“That doesn’t make sense.”
I had to read it a few times and then concluded as you did.
I think the property line does move if the beach erodes and the high tide line is closer to your house. You don't keep ownership up to the old high tide line, just the new one. I have no idea what happens if the beach erodes and you lose property, but then is rebuilt. Do you get back the property to the old high tide mark or is there a ratcheting effect where you don't get anything back? Either way, you don't get anything new past your old property line.
There was a threshhold issue in the case-- does the "takings clause" of the Constitution bar only seizures by the Executive or Legislative branches (classic "eminent domain" takings), or also include court rulings which don't literally "take" property but have the effect of reducing its value? The second issue was, if the clause does apply to court rulings, was this ruling such a change in Florida law that it deprived the owners of their vested rights?
Here, the Court agreed 8-0 (Stevens was recused) that this ruling did nothing more than recognize rights the State of Florida always had to fill in erroded beaches, so it wasn't a "taking" of any vested rights. The Court therefore did not need to decide the first question (can a judicial order which doesn't literally seize property ever be a "taking"), but the opinions show the Court was split 4-4 on that issue.
If you read the opinion, which may be found here, the Court is split 4-4 on the "judicial takings" element of the case. While that is an important question or provision, it wasn't necessarily central to the question of "did the FL Supreme Court violate the Constitution". The majority held that it did not.
The report is just poorly written, per usual.
I don’t have an issue with them augmenting the beach, even at the cost of the homes ‘beachfront’ title. But the owners should be compensated for it.
Always check state laws first.
Chesapeake Bay is really different BTW.
The left hates private property and would love to rip it from our hands. But they can’t. So they tax it to death and prevent us from using OUR property.
There are places ~ California is such a place ~ where it's thought proper to sue the pants off adjacent land owners to make them pay for beach augmentation and erosion control. The state doesn't always win but they try. These people are lucky they lived in Florida which has an entirely different tradition (inherited from Spain rather than Mexico).
I used to live on an island where the beaches moved regularly. The story was that some property lines were measured starting from the waterline, and others were measured from the road. As the beaches eroded, people's property started to overlap. I have no idea how the disputes were resolved (or if the whole thing was an urban legend).
I did, that was post #4 :-)
Sorry! That'll teach me for not reading the whole thread before posting.
If you accept the premise that compensation is due to a landowner because the value of his property is affected, there would be an endless number of cases. In “Psycho,” the new Interstate changed traffic patterns to adversely affect all businesses on the old highway. Norman Bates could have sued for compensation. Things get built, things get taken down. Erosion control sounds like a legit function to me, and such actions by the state could be anticipated by the purchaser.
“I went to the Supreme Court web site and read the summary of the decision. Long and short of it- the person writing this article should be beaten severly with a computer keyboard, then given Crayons to play with.”
Hilarious.
I owe you for the great laugh you gave me on that one. Unfortunately, the Kenyan Fraud has all my money, so you’ll have to get it out of his stash.
Keep posting.
The same should be done to 99% of the so-called journalists now-a-days!
There property was not defined by points on a map it was defined by the tide. The government, through its action made a publicly owned piece of land at the expense of these peoples private property. They should be compensated by the difference between a beach front and an ocean view property.
As to the erosion thing... Perhaps beach front property should pay a higher tax rate for the maintenance, there are ways to take care of that.
The problem stems from Florida’s definition of property lines along oceanfronts. “The mean high tide mark” is the owner’s property line. They can control up to that point. There is no such thing as a “private beach” in Florida. The people who brought suit were trying to claim the “new” beach added after erosion from storms were theirs, even though the rest of us taxpayers paid for it. ....
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