California coastal access advocates are celebrating a victory. On Monday, Oct. 1, the United States Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal by a Silicon Valley billionaire who closed his beach access to the public.
The Martins Beach case had been watched closely by beachgoers and privacy rights advocates for a decade. Vinod Khosla, who co-founded Sun Microsystems, bought the beach property in 2008. There had been a public gate on the 89-acre property near Half Moon Bay, but Khosla claimed maintaining the restroom, parking lot and other amenities in a safe condition was too costly, and exceeded the fees generated from admission and a small general store at the site.
Khosla locked the gate and hired security, which fired up many environmental groups. The billionaire has been in court over the accessway ever since. The case in question involves local nonprofit Surfrider Foundation, which filed a lawsuit back in 2013, citing the California Coastal Act. Khosla, in turn, sued the California Coastal Commission and other agencies over his rights as property owner and the constitutionality of the Coastal Act.
A San Mateo judge, and later an appeals court judge, ruled that Khosla required commission approval and a permit to legally block access. He continued to make his way through the legal system, but was ultimately unsuccessful based on the SCOTUS decision.
“Today’s decision is a significant win for beach access rights across the nation,” Surfrider’s attorney, Eric Buescher, said in an online statement. “By declining to hear the case, the U.S. Supreme Court has rejected the owner’s attempt to purchase a public resource. We’re grateful to the California Coastal Act’s promise that the beach cannot be bought, but instead belongs to the public, has survived a billionaire’s whims which risked gutting the statute’s protections.”
Khosla now looks to apply for a permit to close the road leading to Martins Beach, as directed by the appeals court.
Locally, the case is reminiscent of a 2016 case involving Dr. Warren M. and Mrs. Henny Lent, who were hit with a $4.185 million fine from the commission for not creating a public accessway next to their Las Flores Beach property. The Lents challenged the order, citing a number of problems.
Earlier this year, LA Superior Court Judge James Chalfant found that the coastal commission had acted “somewhat arbitrarily in its decision,” and ordered it to set a new penalty, and give the Lents ample notice and an opportunity to contest the amount at a commission hearing.