Texas Supreme Court: Public Beach Easement Does Not Roll

Basically, the Texas Supreme Court overruled the Texas Public Beaches Act by saying home owners can keep their land even if the beach line reaches into their land due to erosion from tropical storms/hurricanes.

On one hand, this protects the homeowners from having their land and homes condemned and forced to be sold to the State.

On the other hand, this means less public beach for people to go to and less leeway for the state to restore or clean beaches.

One good thing (for some people) is that the Texas land office won't be spending anymore money on beach renourishment on the West End of Galveston Island.

I'm cool with this. It's not like Mother Nature gives a flying pig about our laws anyway, so I'm not in favor of punishing people for something that's out of their control.

To be fair to the other side, though, this also means a lot of idiots with some money are going to build their beachhouses in the perfect spot for them to fall down due to erosion.

Well, that's their problem if they build their houses in an area they know have a problem. Anyway, I'm generally for things that help preserve beaches/environment and what not, but if the state wants to turn someone's property into public property then they really should compensate the the homeowners appropriately. The way the article phrases it makes it sound like they were just kicking people out of their houses when the coast line changed.

It's their problem until they start asking the government for money, then it's everyone's problem.

And then we can laugh at their homeless asses. Or is that too cruel?

If the government wants to buy someone's land, then the landowners do have the right to demand appropriate compensation for the current worth of the land. And the government certainly doesn't have the right to go around kicking people out of their homes for reasons beyond man's ultimate control.

Plus, I'm pretty sure that things like this can't be applied retroactively, so I don't think suing the government would win anything for anyone.

And also, I'm fairly certain you can't ask the government for money for your house falling down due to erosion. That's what home insurance is for. All a landowner could ask would be the current worth of the land.

This has me wondering if someone will try a Lex Luthor scheme and buy a lot of land that isn't on the beachfront, but will be soon.

Well, unless they're going to try and bomb a crapload of shit it's going to have to be a longterm plan. Mother Nature doesn't always work as fast as you'd like and does not care about your profit margins.

Whatever happened to eminent domain? I thought that was an established legal principle.

What about it? If it's been nerfed, it probably has to do with abuse.

Oh yeah, eminent domain definitely gets abused. If I recall, most commonly it's by police districts using sales of the seized property to get extra funding. I'll try to dig up one of the articles I read about it when I have time.