tl;dr: The property was granted to the original owner
by the government of Mexico before California was part
of the US. The property rights were preserved by the
treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo in 1848. California's right
of access to the shoreline does not override the
pre-existing property right.
Welcome to the Southwest, and if you think this is strange,
try exploring seniority of water rights.
Don't like the situation? Write your congress-critters
and legislators, or take it to court. Other members of
the tech community might respond, but are unlikely to have
enough leverage to secure access to that beach. No, I
don't like it either.
BTW, do you know (or does anyone know) the specific history of this particular parcel? The closest thing I could find was a wikipedia bit on Spanish and Mexican land grants...
various articles refer to the "original owner" who filed a claim on the land (upheld by the US courts in the mid 1800s), but I can't find anything more than that...
"The judge cited the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which settled the Mexican-American War and required that the U.S. recognize Mexican land grants in cases where a claim had been filed.
The original owner of the land fronting Martin's Beach had indeed filed a claim, which was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1859, 14 years before California drafted its first constitution."
One issue I don't understand here is why the parcel is exempt from the public easement required through the California state constitution... it makes sense that the treaty required the US to recognize existing land ownership, but it seems strange that it exempt from constitution where it comes to use. For instance, permits would still be required to build on it, land use law is still in effect, right?
I'll try to dig up the opinion and read it some time. If anyone has some interesting links, please post them.
From what I can see looking at the treaty, and looking at the Supreme Court case, it seems to me that you are right. I do not see how either of them prohibit what California wants to do, provided that California is not singling out Mexicans. It's also not clear to me from the treaty if it even applies to people who were not Mexicans at the time the treaty was enacted.
Note: I have not extensively researched this. I googled for the text of the treaty, and then did some searching within it to try to find the parts relevant to property rights. I also googled for the Supreme Court case and read the decision (which was short and not very informative by today's standards). In other words, I could be completely off on this.
California's right of access to the shoreline does not override the pre-existing property right.
I think what you meant to say was:
"The defendant's position is that California's right of access to the shoreline does not override the pre-existing property right."
As in: this "does not override" phrase you gingerly tucked is not only far from obvious (in this use case); it's highly, highly contentious -- and requires aggressive substantiation to be tenable. In fact, it's a lot like saying:
"The title for this Brooklyn brownstone I just bought ultimately traces back to the Dutch land grants (or Lenape tribe covenants, etc; take your pick); NYC's zoning restrictions do not override the existing property rights. So if you don't like this 40-story casino-hotel-brothel complex I'm building, well, you can just bugger off."
Fair point - I'd edit, but the edit window time has passed.
I was trying to summarize the previous discussions, but
yes, this is contentious, and the outcome is not yet clear.
I am adding the top comment from the original article by user petethexman:
As a former Coastal Commission staff member in the 1980s, I've seen this scenario played out over and over. The so-called issue of Spanish land grants pre-existing and somehow superceding laws like the Coastal Act isn't an issue at all -- land grants occurred in the early 1800s all over California, so Martins Beach isn't any special or privileged circumstance.
It isn't just a matter of the Coastal Act. What was alluded to regarding public access along the road involves what is known as a prescriptive right. Areas with a history of public use can have the right of access through prescriptive rights regardless of the existence of Coastal Act policies. Prescriptive rights have a lengthy history -- and by lengthy, I mean going back to English common law in the 1100s. The standards for a prescriptive easement involve, among other things, that the public use be open, "notorious" (which means well known and not secretive), and continuous for a period of time. Many prescriptive rights inure in a time period as short as 5 years or as long as 20. And it isn't just the coast. If your neighbor builds a concrete block wall between your back yards and it turned out to be on your property and not his (a very common occurrence), over that period of time, if not otherwise contested or challenged, it could become his property if he was to pursue that. So the impact of these decisions is widespread not just in terms of natural resources but also public usage of trails as well.
Access to the water is a right guaranteed not just to and along the coast but to any body of water -- lake, stream, pond, whatever. Article X Section 4 of the California Constitution, enacted shortly after statehood in 1850, states in part that the public has a right to access of "the waters of the state of California," that no person, organization, corporation, or any other entity can block access to the waters of the state, and that the Legislature, in enacting future laws, must give THE most liberal application of those rights possible.
Case in point: When I lived in Lake Arrowhead in the San Bernardino Mountains in southern California, the homeowner association there blocked public access to the lake unless you were an association member/property owner on the lake. The dam was constructed beginning in 1922 and has always been in private ownership by the association. During the drought in the early- to mid-1990s, the lake level dropped nearly 20 feet, and boat owners who didn't have docks that could adjust to fluctuating water levels couldn't launch their boats. Their solution? Not take personal responsibility, certainly. No. They had the Community Services District (for water and sewage disposal) enact an ordinance that charged everyone within the District (whose boundaries far exceeded the area of the homeowners' association) higher rates to raise $60 million to subsidize the wealthy lakefront property owners who didn't have adjustable docks -- fewer than 100 property owners, in a community with over 12,000 permanent year-round residents. This money was for purchasing water from the State Water Project through convoluted three- or four-step water swapping deals with other water districts to obtain water indirectly AND was done in a manner that avoided any approvals that could be conditioned to force public access to the lake directly.
The solution to these problems? Be vigilant. Always be vigilant. The ocean is OUR ocean, and access to the beaches and water is an integral part of the culture of California. This tiny beach, away from view, away from virtually everyone except those very few lucky individuals who live there, is important. It only takes one bad precedent, one bad court ruling, to have impacts not only on this beach, not only on all California beaches, not only all bodies of water, but to any resource belonging to the people of California, whether it be a small creek in the eastern Sierra, a forest, or a desert.
It'd be nice for someone to verify that, but apparently "The Surfrider Foundation San Mateo County Chapter has been engaged in an effort to reestablish public access to Martin's Beach".
They can be found at: http://smc.surfrider.org Looks like they are doing the right thing. And I guess it wouldn't harm writing that I've also just donated a token $100 to them.
Interesting! Is this limited to only naturally occurring bodies of water or does it include artificial?
I'm guessing artificial lakes are not included, as there are plenty of examples where gated communities restrict access, such as Lake Sherwood in the Los Angeles suburb of Westlake Village.
A prescriptive easement has to be without permission by the owner. Since the previous owner was charging $10 to park, I would argue they had permission.
Re: tl;dr that's what the trial court judge found, but the case is currently on appeal. It will almost certainly be heard eventually by the California Supreme Court.
Should the existing property rights only last as long as current owners? As soon as the property ownership pass to another person/entity, the current law should apply?
I assume boomzilla doesn't mean confiscating the entire property, simply that with its transfer the california constitution should apply - including article X, which guarantees public access to beaches.
In the UK, which has a long and sometimes poorly recorded legal history, there are procedures for this sort of thing. If land has some unusual legal status conferred on it by a 500 year old law, the government can simply pass a law saying "not any more it doesn't" and the unusual legal status is removed.
I dread to think how complicated land ownership would end up after multiple hundreds or thousands of years if there were no way to change or update the laws made by our long-dead ancestors.
In the US, treaties with other countries become part of the "supreme law of the land" along with all the other federal stuff congress passes. Individual states don't have the right to alter those (effectively federal) laws.
Sure, it could be changed, California is a big powerful state, but their representatives are busy people, and i'm sure billionaires can donate a few thousand dollars to ensure the issue never really comes up at the federal level.
In general, in California, in US? Those are not as self-evident and obvious things.
Nebraska for a while had a allodial title system up until 2005. Yeah you could basically pay a huge chunk of property taxes ahead and then be "free from property taxes". Well free as long as they didn't die. So yeah property is property is not as simple.
For generations, thi is how property tax has been protected from riing; it is legal to transfer property to a blood relative without a re-assessment of the property tax. i.e. the tax level set when purchased can be maintained.
However with sale of property between strangers, there is a new assessment at each transaction. This should be the same for coding rights too, it would seem. There may be instances where this is not the case...
It would seem though that some people want to preserve such classifications when it comes to historical properties - which may be the play Khosla is taking.
(He is also claiming that his LLC owns it - and not him directly, thus he doesnt need to go to court, personally).
Why? Don't get me wrong, I would totally support that kind of property principles, but given how it would apply to e.g. IP rights, I don't think it's viable in the current corpocratic atmosphere.
I believe eminent domain trumped property right in most if not all cases. The property right "inherited" from Mexico is just property right. Eminent domain is for public good. A court can always grant easement access to the coast to the public using eminent domain.
Last time this came up on KQED, I think that Khosla's lawyers were saying something about being amenable to an eminent domain argument, under which CA would need to compensate Khosla for the access. Evidently, the argument that the Coastal Commission approach has made does not require compensation.
The "guy" (Vinod Khosla) is not advancing an argument based on "ancestral lands" as he was born in 1955 in Delhi, India.
He's claiming that the original owner of the property was granted it in whole by the government of Mexico, which precedes any claims or legal statutes enacted by the US or California governments. I think the property should be confiscated to be held in trust as a lesson to this guy and the rest of the ultra-rich that this is our planet too.
Property rights recap at: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6917815
tl;dr: The property was granted to the original owner by the government of Mexico before California was part of the US. The property rights were preserved by the treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo in 1848. California's right of access to the shoreline does not override the pre-existing property right.
Welcome to the Southwest, and if you think this is strange, try exploring seniority of water rights.
Don't like the situation? Write your congress-critters and legislators, or take it to court. Other members of the tech community might respond, but are unlikely to have enough leverage to secure access to that beach. No, I don't like it either.