If someone tramps across the well-manicured grass in front of your home, you would be fully within your rights to tell them to get off your lawn.
But yelling at someone to get off your property when it’s a public beach? That could bring down the wrath of the California Coastal Commission.
A woman who was filmed yelling at beachgoers at Laguna Beach recently to get off “my property” has received a letter from the California Coastal Commission instructing her to stop blocking access to a public stretch of the sand, KCAL-TV reported.
The 1976 California Coastal Act protects the public’s access to the state’s beaches. Under the law, people have the right to use the beach as far as the mean high tide line, which is generally considered to be the wet or damp sand area of the beach. Oceanfront homeowners can’t legally stop people from planting their umbrellas and blankets on that sand.
According to the Coastal Commission’s website, the commission can impose administrative penalties of up to $11,250 a day for each violation of the law’s public access provisions.
A TikTok video filmed July 19 shows the woman yelling at a group of people: “I’m not joking around! It’s not harassment on the beach, it’s harassment in my whole property. Get out of here! Now!”
The video then shows the woman, whose name has not been publicly released, bringing out rope to cordon off a section of sand, resulting in the group of people getting up to leave. She continues to shout at them as they depart.
Last week, the California Coastal Commission sent the woman a citation, saying that she was “was verbally harassing those beachgoers,” according to KCAL.
The ropes shown in the video blocking off a portion of the sand near the woman’s home are also not legal and must be removed by September, the commission’s letter to the woman states, according to the TV station. She was given until Aug. 16 to respond to the notice of violations, KCAL reported.
A spokesperson for the California Coastal Commission confirmed that they sent the letter to the homeowner but declined to share it with The Times until the agency gets a response.
