After the governor of California signed a bill into law late last year aimed at opening up Hollister Ranch, the area’s 133 member Hollister Ranch Owners’ Association has filed suit against the state claiming the law is unconstitutional. Photo: hollisterranchlistings.com
The decades-long public access dispute over one of California’s last stretches of wild coastline, Hollister Ranch, appeared to be over late last year when Governor Gavin Newsom signed a bill into law aimed at creating public access to area beaches by 2022. But, lending truth to the maxim “it ain’t over ’til it’s over” or rather “it ain’t open ’til it’s open” a group comprised of 133 property owners known as the Hollister Ranch Owners’ Association filed suit last week against the State of California decrying that certain provisions in the bill, AB 1680, are unconstitutional.
In the complaint filed in the U.S. District Court’s Central California District, the Pacific Legal Foundation, which represents the HROA in the lawsuit, argue that the new law gives state officials the right to search private coastal property without a warrant, threatens conservation efforts of the area’s coastline, and punishes landowners who speak out against the law.
Furthermore, the Pacific Legal Foundation in a press release points out that the HROA was not against AB 1680 in its previous forms, rather the group takes issue with late amendments that were made “at the end of the legislation session without hearings or debate.”
“The California Coastal Commission has spent decades trying to turn private ranch lands into a public area without adequately respecting the private rights of those who live there, or its special and historical character as an area preserved from public damage and set aside for ranching,” said David Breemer, a senior attorney at Pacific Legal Foundation, in the release. “There is a right way and wrong way to deal with access issues. Requiring property owners to submit to searches of property without notice or limits and threatening them with fines for speaking out or acting in other lawful ways to defend their private property is the wrong way. If California uses these overreaching means at Hollister Ranch in pursuit of its access goals, no one’s property is safe.”
The controversy surrounding efforts to open Hollister Ranch to the public has been ongoing for the better part of thirty years – the primary adversaries being the California Coastal Commission that sees itself as promoting public access to the coast enshrined in the state’s landmark Coastal Act and the Hollister Ranch Owners’ Association that sees itself as a group of unlikely conservationists preserving the state’s last stretch of wild coast from the scourge of parking lots and litter on the beach.
The issue, though, gained steam after the California Coastal Commission settled with the HROA in May 2018 forfeiting the last remaining land-based public access route to the Ranch’s beaches. This incensed public access advocates, culminating in a scathing op-ed in the New York Times accusing Hollister Ranch landowners of thinly-veiled racism.
A little over a year later, Governor Newsom signed AB 1680 into law, which stipulates a two-stage roll-out of a new public access plan to Hollister Ranch’s coast to be completed by April 2022. Local landowners, however, see the move as a classic case of government overreach and say their lawsuit is not in opposition to public access per se, but rather an effort to protect the coast.
“This is not an action we wanted to take,” explained HROA President Monte Ward in a January 16 letter to the Coastal Commission, State Lands Commission, California Coastal Conservancy and the California Department of Parks and Recreation. “Indeed, we have been encouraged by the unprecedented effort you and other state leaders have made to take a fresh look at the facts on the ground and, through collaboration and cooperation, develop a new access plan that preserves a wilderness coastline rich in biodiversity and cultural resources, while protecting the Ranch’s privacy and traditions. We remain committed to working together to develop a mutually acceptable access plan.”
News of the suit comes just two weeks after the California Coastal Commission and State Lands Commission filed a joint lawsuit against tech billionaire Vinod Khosla related to an ongoing dispute over coastal access at Martins Beach in San Mateo County. No doubt both cases are months if not years away from resolution, but how the courts rule on them will affect the right of all Californians to access the coast for decades to come.
