Battle over billionaire's private Bay Area beach access goes to trial

The never-ending battle over access to Martins Beach has been revived again by a Bay Area judge who ruled California’s case against a billionaire landowner can go forward.

The saga began 16 years ago when Sun Microsystems co-founder Vinod Khosla bought an 89-acre beachfront property in San Mateo County. That property included Martins Beach Road, long used to access the beach, which he gated off and closed to the public. Since then, multiple lawsuits have been filed to force Khosla to share the road once more.

In 2018, a decade after Khosla bought the property, the U.S. Supreme Court declined his appeal, seemingly handing Martins Beach back to the public for good. But the next year, a San Francisco district appeals court ruled in favor of Khosla.

The fight centers around "public dedication." In property law, this can either be explicit — a land grant by the owner, for example — or implied. The Martins Beach case is one of implied public dedication; supporters of keeping it open have argued because previous owners allowed beachgoers to use the single road down to Martins Beach, that constituted public dedication of the road. The San Francisco appeals court ruled that because prior owners charged a parking fee to use the beach, there was no such public dedication.

But still, the fight did not die. In 2020, the California State Lands Commission and California Coastal Commission sued Khosla anew. The commissions allege that because the public used the beach for generations, it cannot be restricted by a private property owner.

Khosla has been trying to get the case thrown out, but a San Mateo County Superior Court filing on Friday shows that the lawsuit will move forward. A pretrial conference has been set for March 2025, and the bench trial will begin on April 22, 2025. Khosla said previously that although he supports the California Coastal Act, "property rights are even more important." Last week, he reportedly hosted President Joe Biden at his Portola Valley home for a fundraiser.

Battles over private land are rife throughout California; a recent study found that over half a million acres of the state’s public lands are locked away by private landowners.