The Environmental Law Clinic recently filed an amicus brief on behalf of clinic clients Surfrider Foundation and Azul in the California Court of Appeal in Lent v. California Coastal Commission.  Clinic students Amanda Zerbe and Ryan Gallagher drafted the brief to support the California Coastal Commission’s use of its enforcement power to protect public access to the coast.

For many decades, beachfront property owners’ illegal, unrelenting efforts to block coastal access have threatened to turn public beaches into private playgrounds.  This has had a disproportionate impact on minority and lower-income groups, who are drastically underrepresented in coastal communities and often rely on public coastal access points to enjoy the beach.  In Malibu, where the access violation at issue in this case occurred, the problem is particularly pronounced, with long-documented efforts by coastal homeowners to purposely thwart public access.

In response to the crisis of public access, the California Legislature strengthened the Coastal Commission’s authority to protect coastal access by enacting section 30821 of the Coastal Act in 2014.  Section 30821 empowers the Commission to impose administrative penalties of up to $11,250 per day for ongoing coastal access violations.  In practice, though, penalties are imposed only as a last resort: Out of the 175 access violations between 2014 and 2018, the Commission only employed the penalty process in eight cases.

Lent v. California Coastal Commission is one of those cases.  In Lent, beachfront vacation homeowners in Malibu refused to remove an unpermitted deck and stairway and a locked gate that blocked a recorded easement for public access to the beach along the edge of their property.  The Lents’ violations prevented the Commission from opening the only viable public access point along a nearly three-mile-long segment of beach.  In 2016, after trying for nearly a decade to resolve these access issues with the Lents, the Commission imposed a $4.2 million administrative penalty – approximately half of the amount authorized by section 30821.  The Lents challenged the order and penalty, contending among other things that the penalty is unconstitutional.

ELC’s brief argues that the Coastal Commission’s use of its enforcement power was not only appropriate to address a grievous access violation along one of the least publicly accessible portions of California’s coastline; it was also necessary to deter similar violations in the future.

Section 30821 has been a triumph for public access to the coast.  Since the Commission gained penalty authority, the time needed to resolve access violations has dropped from an average of three years to only three months.  Without this penalty authority and the ability to meaningfully use it when necessary, property owners’ efforts to privatize the beach may once again render coastal access an elite privilege rather than a public right.

Photo of Las Flores Beach in Malibu, Copyright (C) 2002-2020 Kenneth & Gabrielle Adelman, California Coastal Records Project, www.Californiacoastline.org.