City officials say the decision does not affect the city, as they have been working for more than a year with the Coastal Commission.
By Hans Laetz / Special to The Malibu Times
The California Coastal Commission’s legality was affirmed Tuesday morning, when the Supreme Court of the United States declined to hear a challenge to the commission’s constitutionality.
The highest court let stand the unanimous opinion from the California Supreme Court that the makeup of Coastal Commission is legal, and with it, the powers of a commission approved by a landslide of the state’s voters in 1972 and enacted in 1976 to preserve public access and limit development on California’s coast.
The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision reverberates all the way to Malibu City Hall, where officials had at one time hoped to overturn the Coastal Commission-drafted city Local Coastal Plan by means of a Supreme Court-ordered dissolution of the commission.
“This is a sad day for Malibu,” said Ted Vaill, a frequent Coastal Commission critic. “I used to be a city planning commissioner, and I’m glad I’m not anymore, because on every decision they [city officials] will make, they’ll have a noose around their neck, with the rope held by the Coastal Commission.”
But coastal access advocates rejoiced. State Attorney General Bill Lockyer, who had defended the commission, called the state Supreme Court’s decision “a victory for our world-class coastline and the people of California.
“The court has found that what matters most is protecting the coast,” Lockyer said when the original decision was handed down.
At issue is a statewide agency that has shown no reluctance to take on local land-use issues that, outside the coastal zone, are left to local governments.
This year, the Coastal Commission has acted to prosecute Broad Beach residents who illegally bulldozed tons of sand from public beaches, remove entry gates at Serra Retreat and open new pedestrian beach access points at Carbon Beach.
Malibu officials said they did not expect the U.S. court to pick up this latest case, and had already been working with the commission based on that expectation.
“I don’t think it means very much,” said City Councilmember Jeff Jennings, an attorney. “We’ve been working with the commission for the last year and a half, since the California court ruling.”
Another lawyer on the council, Andy Stern, agreed. “Although I always felt this case had great merit, I’m not surprised that the Supreme Court decided not to review it.”
Jennings said the city expected the ruling, and “has been working with the commission staff to solve the nuts and bolts problems we’ve run into with the LCP.”
Stern agreed. “I think we’re getting along better with the Coastal Commission now than we ever have,” he said.
Tuesday’s Supreme Court announcement let stand a decision against a Costa Mesa group that built an artificial reef made of old tires, jugs, plastic pipe and rope in the ocean off Newport Beach in 2000, without approval from the commission. The Marine Forests Society was criticized by other ocean groups for littering the seabed.
But its case was picked up by the Pacific Legal Foundation, a property rights advocacy group looking to overturn the constitutionality of the Coastal Commission. The Legislature approved changes to the commission’s makeup and legal standings in 2001, and although Marine Forests won the first two court rulings, the state and now the federal Supreme Courts have ruled in favor of the commission.