This Pinellas beach town just won a victory in the battle for beach access

A federal judge on Monday sided with the city of Redington Beach in Pinellas County in a lengthy legal battle with waterfront property owners over public access to the beach.

U.S. District Judge Virginia Hernandez Covington announced in a 53-page ruling that the city had sufficiently demonstrated that privately owned portions of the beach had been “customarily” used by the public in the past.

Covington upheld a 2018 ordinance designed to protect traditional uses of the beach's so-called “dry sand areas” for activities such as walking, sunbathing, fishing and building sandcastles.

The owners of the waterfront properties argued that the ordinance represented an unconstitutional expropriation of their private property.

“The purpose of the ordinance is not to 'take' the portion of dry sand beach in the town owned by plaintiffs,” Covington wrote. “Rather, it is to recognize and protect the customary use rights of those residents who have acquired by customary law the right to use this private beach in a certain manner.”

Related: A city in Pinellas is clarifying its beach rules. Some residents are confused.

The Florida Constitution guarantees public access to stretches of beach “below the mean high tide line,” often referred to as wet stretches of beach. But Covington's ruling, issued in two consolidated lawsuits brought by property owners, affected stretches of beach with dry sand closer to homes.

Florida lawmakers made controversial changes to laws affecting customary use in 2018. This included establishing an extensive process for local governments seeking to enact customary use ordinances, including requiring them to obtain court approval.

Redington Beach passed its ordinance in June 2018. State law allows local governments that passed ordinances before July 1, 2018, to rely on common law, known as an “affirmative defense,” if the ordinances were challenged in court.

Covington wrote that under the law, Redington Beach “could keep its ordinance in effect if the court finds that the City's evidence establishes a preponderance of probability that the City's residents and visitors have acquired, through customary use, the right to use the privately owned portions of the City's dry sand beach.”

“The Court concludes that the evidence presented by the City at trial substantially exceeded the amount of evidence required to support its defense,” she wrote in her conclusion. “Therefore, the Court concludes that the City has established customary use of the privately owned dry sand beach in the City and that this use is consistent with the limited permitted uses set forth in the ordinance. Furthermore, the City has established that this customary use has been by both City residents and persons visiting the City either as vacation renters or as guests of residents.”

In one of the cases, which were later consolidated, U.S. District Judge James S. Moody ruled in favor of a group of waterfront property owners in 2020. But a panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned that ruling in 2021 and sent the case back to the district court.