Check out this decision, entered by a Rhode Island Superior Court (a general jurisdiction trial court) denying the State's motion for summary judgment. The court concluded that a recently-adopted statute shifting the boundary between public and private property on RI's beaches is a taking.
We won't be commenting in too much detail because this is one of ours (PLF colleague Dave Breemer represents the plaintiffs). But here's what you need to know:
- Until recently, RI law used the high water mark (mean high-tide line) as the boundary between the public beach and private property.
- In 2023, the RI Assembly adopted a statute that redefined that boundary, and moved it shorewards to where "the land held in trust by the state for the enjoyment of all of its people ends and private property belonging to littoral owners begins."
- As a consequence, the public may enter and use "where shore exists, on wet and or dry sand or rocky beach, up to ten feet (10') landward of the recognizable high tide line."
- Takings claim under both RI and U.S. Constitutions followed. The State moved to dismiss, and the court converted it to a motion for summary judgment.
- The court first recognized that the public trust doctrine preserves the public's ability to engage in certain activities in state waters and to access the shoreline.
- In 1982, consistent with longstanding U.S. Supreme Court precedent, RI established the mean high tide line as the boundary between private property, and the area in which the public can exercise those rights.
- The court rejected the State's argument that the public trust and custom have rendered public access on this part of a beach a "background principle" that effectively removed the right to exclude stick from littoral owners' bundle.
- Not so, held the court: "The General Assembly, in enacting The Act, appropriated a public right of access onto private property when it designated up to 10' landward of the recognizable high tide line as the access point for the public's rights and privileges." Slip op. at 10-11.
- "Therefore, The Act, in disposing of the MHT line, extended the point of public access over the Plaintiff’s private property. Furthermore, rather than restraining the Plaintiff’s use of their own property, The Act extends permanently a right of access to the public and inhibits Plaintiff’s right to exclude. The extension of the access point clearly results in the taking of 'an interest in property.'" Slip op. at 11.
- "The Act reduced the Plaintiff’s “bundle of rights” inherent in the ownership of property by expanding the preexisting boundary line to ten feet landward of the recognizable high tide line and confiscated the Plaintiff’s property resulting in an unconstitutional taking." Id.
More on the decision here:
- R.I. Superior Court judge sides with property owners in shoreline access law dispute" (Rhode Island Current)
- "RI judge sides with beachfront homeowner in court fight. What does it mean for public beach access?" (The Providence Journal)
- "Initial Court Ruling Tosses Sand on R.I.'s Year-Old Beach Access Law" (ecoRI News)
According to these stories, the State indicates it is going to appeal to the RI Supreme Court, so stay tuned.
Decision, Stilts, LLC v. State of Rhode Island, No. SC-2023-0481 (R.I. Super. July 12, 2024)