EDITORIAL: Everybody has an opinion after Supremes consider local case

When the Supreme Court spotlight fell on our little fishing village, newspapers from across America opined on the beach restoration issue that has divided the Destin area for more than a decade.

In lieu of your regularly scheduled editorial, we at The Log will let other media outlets around the nation do the talking points.

What follows are some of those opinions.

•The Wall Street Journal suggests that the state is confiscating “private waterfront land for a dubious public purpose.”
“Typically done in the name of deterring erosion, the government carts in truckloads of sand, making the beach bigger. But rather than extending the property of the owner, the state declares itself owner of the sandy addition, effectively separating waterfront home owners from the water itself.”
The piece goes on to state “If the state wants to create a public beach, it may have the power to do so by invoking eminent domain and compensating owners for their loss. Short of that, the action is a taking that violates the Fifth Amendment.”

•Fred Grimm, of the Miami Herald, says the beachfront owner’s case is based on “abstract legal theory”
“Most Floridians would think that adding new sand to eroding waterfront property considerably enhances property values. Particularly in hurricane alley … The wrong decision could wash over Florida’s economy like a tidal wave.”

•Our sister paper, The Panama City News Herald argues in favor of the beachfront property owners. The editorial states that “the shifting sands of statutory rights are no substitute for concrete constitutional protections.”
“Private ownership isn’t limited to the owner’s ability to access his property, as the state court said. It includes the power to exclude others from using it … if the owners have been deprived of that right, then they should be compensated for their loss as per the Fourth Amendment.”

To read The Log's opinion, click here.

• The Orlando Sentinel calls the plaintiff’s arguments “bogus beach claims.” The editorial board maintains that “the property owners represented at the U.S. Supreme Court this week didn't lose an inch of their land as a result of the beach restoration project, as Justice Stephen Breyer pointed out. They weren't deprived of their access to the Gulf of Mexico, or their view of it. They are reaping the benefit, at public expense, of more protection against storm surges and erosion… Florida developed its own system decades ago to balance public and private interests in beach restoration. The U.S. justices should leave it alone.”

•The St. Petersburg Times opines that “If the U.S. Supreme Court sets aside the ruling by the Florida Supreme Court it will be an activist step, reaching deeply into the Florida court's interpretation of state law and the state Constitution. There was nothing radical about the state court's ruling. It adjusted a rather speculative private property interest in order to secure the broader public interest in beach renourishment that protects the tourism economy and public infrastructure. The Florida court decision should be allowed to stand.”

•From the sands of Florida to the snow of Michigan, the Port Huron Times Herald says that in this case “two cherished rights collide.”
“If Florida loses, the ruling almost certainly would kill beach-restoration efforts. No state could afford the cost of buying its beaches… In the Western world, the right to walk along the shore of a navigable body of water dates back more than 1,500 years to Roman law.”

•The Fort Myers New Press agrees, saying that beachfront homeowners claim to own the new beach is “a boldly selfish claim, especially since renourishment increases beachfront property's value, rather than diminishing it. The Destin owners are demanding compensation they don't deserve … But the possibility that they could win in the U.S. Supreme Court is fearsome.”

•The Washington Post disagrees. “States have a responsibility to protect their resources, and in Florida no natural resource is more precious than the state's coastal lands. Some measure of government intervention may at times be necessary to mitigate extreme weather events … But government entities should not have the right to unilaterally change the nature of private ownership … without the consent of the owners or, alternatively, without paying ‘just compensation.’ ”

•Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick calls the epic sand fight “The best Supreme Court case ever about partying on the beach.” It points to the fact that the justices brought up beach bashes, Coney Island, floating hot dog stands and portable toilets.
“Underwater hot dog stands! Flat Stanley beach parties! Porta-Johns! These and other unimaginable horrors represent the nightmarish consequences of judicially blurring the already blurry line between public and private Florida beaches.”

•A Bloomberg commentary by Ann Woolner dismisses property owners’ argument as a petty complaint that they are “forced to look out over a wider beach teeming with the hoi polloi.”
“Given their reaction, I picture beer-swilling sunbathers, squealing children, rambunctious volleyball players and, as U.S. Supreme Court justices helpfully offered, portable toilets, hot dog stands and raucous spring-break parties … If they do the right thing, they will decide that the Florida Supreme Court knows Florida law better, and leave these property owners to learn how to live with the rest of us.”

•The Broward Palm Beach New Times’ blogger Thomas Francis gets the last word as he suggests that the case wasn’t worthy of the “nation's most eminent legal minds.”
“Rich, oceanfront property owners can't demand that government use our tax dollars to have agencies save their private beaches from erosion, only to then ask that government to protect the beaches from public, tax-paying citizens. Whatever the case, a hot dog stand is not a likely menace to those beachfront property owners. Can we agree on that?”

Apparently not …