Stop the Beach Renourishment, Inc. v. Florida Dept. of Environmental Protection

(United States Supreme Court)

• Protecting Individual Property Rights from Uncompensated Judicial Takings

At issue in this Supreme Court appeal, in its decision below, the Florida supreme court effected a “judicial taking” in violation of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution because its decision departed abruptly from that court’s own precedents and has eliminated a vested property right without providing just compensation.  In its ruling, the Florida court disregarded its own clear precedent and held that the members of the petitioner, Stop the Beach Renourishment, Inc., a coalition of certain beachfront property owners, did not have the right of accretion, i.e., the gradual seaward growth of the shoreline, or the right of direct contact with the water.  Therefore, concluded the court, the property owners were not entitled to any just compensation when the state implemented a beachfront erosion control project that eliminated these property owners’ access to the water and ownership of any future accreted shoreline.  The U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari on the issue whether the Florida Supreme Court’s decision constitutes a judicial taking in violation of the 5th and 14th Amendments.  NELF is among several other amici nationwide who filed briefs in support of the petitioner on this important issue affecting all property owners.  In its amicus brief, NELF argued that the case presents the Court with the opportunity to recognize a judicial taking, as articulated in Justice Stewart’s powerful concurrence in Hughes v. Washington, 389 U.S. 290 (1967), and hold that where, as here, a state court departs abruptly and unforeseeably from clear precedent and eliminates well-established property rights, that  decision constitutes a taking requiring just compensation under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments.  Such a holding would be entirely consistent with the Court’s long history of reviewing and reversing court decisions that change or eliminate constitutionally protected interests.  NELF also argued that the Court’s adoption of Justice Stewart’s judicial taking analysis in Hughes would be consistent with the general and time-honored principle that state courts may not circumvent the Constitution by invoking purported state-law grounds that actually lack “fair or substantial support” in state law and therefore constitute state judicial evasion of federal rights.  Justice Stewart’s judicial taking test in Hughes should therefore be viewed within this larger doctrinal context of “fair or substantial” review to yield the following standard of review proposed by NELF:  A state court decision that, as in this case, eliminates long-held property rights should constitute a judicial taking when the decision lacks “fair or substantial” support in state law such that it constitutes “a sudden change in state law, unpredictable in terms of the relevant precedents.”  Hughes, 389 U.S. at 296.