St. Pete Beach says owning beachfront property does not necessarily give a landowner the right to keep the public off the sand, putting Florida’s customary use doctrine at the center of its defense against a federal lawsuit over beach signs.
The city filed a 20-page answer Aug. 19 denying claims from Plaza Beach Motel and Undertow Beach Bar that its new sign restrictions violate the First Amendment and interfere with their ability to protect private property. The filing lays out 17 defenses, ranging from beach safety and property rights to procedural arguments that could narrow the case before those larger questions are decided.
Central to the city’s response is customary use.
Florida law recognizes that the public may retain recreational rights on privately owned dry sand when use of a particular stretch of beach has been longstanding, reasonable, uninterrupted and free from dispute. St. Pete Beach argues that if those rights are established on the beach involved in the lawsuit, they could limit the businesses’ claimed right to exclude people from the property.
That argument has been hanging over the beach sign fight since before the lawsuit was filed.
Commissioners approved Ordinance 2026-11 in June after months of complaints about “Private Property” and “No Trespassing” signs appearing along the shoreline. The ordinance prohibits permanent signs, stakes, posts and similar structures within 50 feet of the Gulf while allowing removable signs elsewhere under certain conditions.
Residents argued the signs discouraged people from walking and recreating on sections of beach they had used for years. Beachfront property owners said the issue was not people walking along the water but non-guests setting up chairs, umbrellas and other equipment on privately owned property.
Plaza Beach and Undertow sued less than two weeks after commissioners approved the ordinance.
Their complaint alleges the city improperly restricted private speech while exempting some government signs from the same rules. The businesses also argue the restrictions make it harder to identify private property and give legally sufficient notice to people who could otherwise be cited for trespassing.
St. Pete Beach rejects both arguments.
The city says its ordinance regulates the size, structure and location of signs rather than the message written on them. Its attorneys say the restrictions address hazards from rebar, stakes and posts near the water, along with emergency access, wildlife habitat, storm debris and other beach management concerns.
The city also argues that state trespassing laws do not guarantee beachfront owners the right to place a sign at any location they choose. Property owners can still use compliant signs outside the restricted area and other methods of giving notice against trespassing, according to the filing.
Some of the city’s defenses are more technical. St. Pete Beach says the businesses never applied for permits under portions of the new sign rules, meaning the city never made a final decision about how those provisions would apply to their property. The city argues that makes some of the businesses’ claims premature.
The city raises a separate argument about signs seaward of the mean high-water mark. Any signs there would be on state-owned land held for the public, the city argues, regardless of who owns the beachfront property farther inland.
The lawsuit follows a public fight that became increasingly focused on the difference between ownership and use.
City Attorney Ralf Brookes explained during a July public seminar that privately titled beachfront property can still be subject to public recreational rights. Courts examining customary use look at the history of the specific stretch of beach rather than assuming the doctrine applies everywhere.
Plaza Beach owner Rob Czyszczon had warned commissioners before they adopted the ordinance that litigation was likely.
“If you pass this ordinance, there will be consequences,” Czyszczon said at the June meeting. “There most likely will be a lawsuit.”
Czyszczon has since been arrested in an unrelated Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission investigation into hundreds of mothballs scattered near a black skimmer nesting area behind the Plaza Beach Hotel. FWC alleges the mothballs were intended to deter the threatened birds from nesting there; the criminal case is separate from the federal lawsuit over the city’s sign ordinance.
No hearing or trial date is currently listed on the federal docket, and the court has not yet entered a schedule setting the major deadlines in the case.
In asserting customary use as a defense, the city cites the Florida Supreme Court’s Tona-Rama decision and its standard for establishing historic public use of privately owned sand. If that right is established, the court held, it “cannot be revoked by the land owner.”
This content provided in partnership with StPeteCatalyst.com
