Stop the Beach Renourishment, Inc. v. Florida Department of Environmental Protection et al. (560 U.S. 702)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided June 17, 2010 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 560 U.S. 702 · 130 S. Ct. 2592
- Decided
- June 17, 2010
- Term
- October Term 2009
- Vote
- 8–0
- Majority author
- Justice Scalia
- Issue area
- Due Process
- Disposition
- Affirmed
- Outcome
- Petitioning party lost
- Ideological direction
- Liberal
Opinion excerpt
Justice Scalia announced the judgment of the Court and delivered the opinion of the Court with respect to Parts I, IV, and V, and an opinion with respect to Parts II and III, in which The Chief Justice, Justice Thomas, and Justice Auto join. We consider a claim that the decision of a State’s court of last resort took property without just compensation in violation of the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment, as applied against the States through the Fourteenth, see Dolan v. City of Tigard, 512 U. S. 374, 383-384 (1994). I A Generally speaking, state law defines property interests, Phillips v. Washington Legal Foundation, 524 U. S. 156, 164 (1998), including property rights in navigable waters and the lands underneath them, see United States v. Cress, 243 U. S. 316, 319-320 (1917); St. Anthony Falls Water Power Co. v. St. Paul Water Comm’rs, 168 U. S. 349, 358-359 (1897). In Florida, the State owns in trust for the public the land permanently submerged beneath navigable waters and the foreshore (the land between the low-tide line and the mean high-water line). Fla. Const., Art. X, § 11; Broward v. Mabry, 58 Fla. 398, 407-409, 50 So. 826, 829-830 (1909). Thus, the mean high-water line (the average reach of high tide over the preceding 19 years) is the ordinary boundary between private beachfront, or littoral* property, and state-owned land. See Miller v. Bay-To-Gulf, Inc., 141…
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