The Public’s Radio — Private property owners file lawsuit against Rhode Island’s new shoreline access law

A scene from Napatree conservation area in Westerly. Alex Nunes - The Public’s Radio

July 7, 2023

By Alex Nunes — A group of coastal landowners is asking a federal District Court judge to block enforcement of a new state law intended to clarify where beachgoers can be along the state’s shoreline.

The Rhode Island Association of Coastal Taxpayers filed a complaint in U.S. District Court on Friday, saying the state’s new law that clarifies where members of the public can be along the shoreline in Rhode Island violates their rights as property owners under the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

The property owners are asking a judge to declare that the new law “deprives them of their right to exclude non-owners from private beachfront property,” and block the state from enforcing the new law.

“You cannot take property unless you buy it, unless you pay for it,” David Breemer, an attorney with the Pacific Legal Foundation, which is representing the property owners, said in an interview. “What we have here is an attempt to get a large strip of private beachfront land for free, and the [U.S.] Constitution does not permit that.”

Breemer said the state already had an established boundary – the multi-year mean high tide line outlined in a 1980s Rhode Island Supreme Court case – and the new law changes the line in a way that deprives property owners.

According to the complaint, the new law “suddenly and dramatically altered Rhode Island’s common law related to beach property boundaries, with the effect of extending the public beach into traditionally private areas.”

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