A federal appeals court Monday backed beachfront property owners who argued they should receive compensation because Walton County prevented them from using privately owned portions of the beach early in the COVID-19 pandemic.
A three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a decision by U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle, who rejected arguments that a move by the Walton County Commission to close beaches in spring 2020 resulted in an unconstitutional “taking” of property. The lawsuit focused on people being unable to use areas of the beach that they own, rather than on beaches being closed to the general public.
“Despite the county’s significant infringement on property rights, the district court granted summary judgment in favor of Walton County, noting that the ordinance was enacted during the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Monday’s opinion, written by Judge Barbara Lagoa and joined by Judges Andrew Brasher and Ed Carnes. “But there is no COVID exception to the Takings Clause (of the U.S. Constitution). Instead, the government must respect constitutional rights during public emergencies, lest the tools of our security become the means of our undoing.”
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The Atlanta-based appeals court directed the lower court to “consider the amount of ‘just compensation’ that the landowners are entitled to” under the Takings Clause.
Several property owners filed the lawsuit after the county commission in early April 2020 approved an ordinance to temporarily close all beaches — public and private — to try to prevent the spread of COVID-19, which slammed into the state a month earlier. The ordinance expired at the end of April 2020, and beaches were reopened, according to Monday’s ruling.
Under Florida law, privately owned beach property generally extends to a point known as the mean high-water line. Attorneys for the plaintiffs in the lawsuit also cited property owners’ “littoral” rights, which provide access to the water.
In his 2021 decision rejecting the plaintiffs’ arguments, Hinkle wrote that landowners were still able to use much of their property and that the county commission was using its “police power in a public-health emergency.”
“The bottom line is this. The Board of County Commissioners faced an escalating pandemic that posed an enormous threat to public health,” Hinkle wrote. “There was no way to know at that time how many people would die or become gravely ill and how best to minimize the number. Decisive action seemed appropriate. In closing the beaches, the county exhibited no animus toward these plaintiffs or anyone else. Instead, the commissioners exercised their best judgment, based on the limited knowledge available at the time, on how to preserve life and health.”
Hinkle also pointed to the temporary nature of the closure in the Northwest Florida county.
“The plaintiffs had full, unfettered, exclusive access to some of the world’s most beautiful beaches for 337 days during 2020. … That the plaintiffs’ access to part of their property was restricted for 29 days in an effort to safeguard the community was not an unconstitutional taking,” he wrote.
But Monday’s opinion said the ordinance “made it a criminal offense for private beach owners (or anyone else) to use or access their beach property.”
“Meanwhile, grocery stores, hardware stores, pharmacies and public parks in Walton County remained open,” Lagoa wrote. “As such, even though landowners could not walk or swim on their private property, Walton County conceded … that the landowners could walk, swim and engage in other recreational activities in public places.”
The 27-page opinion said the ordinance “physically appropriated the landowners’ property because it barred their physical access to the land.” It also rejected the notion that the ordinance was a restriction on the “use” of property.
“At bottom, (the ordinance) prohibited the landowners from physically accessing their beachfront property under any circumstances,” the opinion said. “That is different from a restriction on how the landowners could use property they otherwise physically possessed.”
