Rhode Island Property Owners Push Back State's Land-Grab

The Rhode Island Association of Coastal Taxpayers (RIACT) filed a lawsuit today challenging a law that takes private property from every coastal property owner in the state and gives it to the public for beach use.

“The government can’t take private property without paying for it, and this basic principle applies even when the government pursues popular goals, like public access,” said J. David Breemer, a senior attorney at Pacific Legal Foundation, a public-interest law firm representing th association in federal court. “Rhode Island’s new beach expansion law is clearly unconstitutional as a taking of private property,” according to a release.

The law, pushed by coastal activists, moves the public beach inland, and onto private coastal property, along the entire state shoreline.

According to PLF:

"The law, which was pushed by coastal access activists, passed in June 2023. It moves the boundary of the public beach inland, and onto private coastal property, along the entire state shoreline. The “mean high tide line” has historically served as the landward boundary of the public beach area in Rhode Island. The law moves the boundary to 10 feet inland of the seaweed line, giving the public an extra strip of land at the expense of private property owners. In short, the state legislature illegally grabbed a 10-to-20-foot-wide ribbon of private land, granted its use by the public, and didn’t pay for it. 

"The law doesn’t limit what the public can do on the strip of private coastal land  Coastal landowners are stuck paying taxes on property now enjoyed by countless strangers who may be able to enter, occupy, and use their private shoreland however and whenever they wish." 

Breemer, who is representing RIACT, said: "This includes the membership of the Rhode Island Association of Coastal Taxpayers, a group of Rhode Island citizens who own coastal residential property in the state’s South Kingston and Westerly region. The new law shrank the amount of their own private land that they can actually use. Nor can they turn away random people from their land; trespassing is no longer trespassing. Historically, the 'mean high tide line' served as the boundary between the public beach area and private property in Rhode Island. But the new law, passed in June 2023, moves the boundary to 10 feet inland of the seaweed line, giving the public an extra strip of land at the expense of private property owners." 

Coastal landowners in Rhode Island are now forced to pay taxes on property frequented by the public, who can enter, occupy, and use their private shore land whenever they wish.