Mike Huckabee Among Neighbors Who Lose Bid to Reopen Florida Beach

A federal judge on Monday said he would not block a local ordinance temporarily closing one Florida county’s beaches, including privately owned sands, to prevent further spread of the coronavirus.

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee was among oceanfront landowners who sought a preliminary injunction to block the Walton County emergency ordinance, claiming violations of property and privacy rights.

The coastal county on Florida’s Panhandle ordered temporary beach closures April 2 to prevent social gatherings that might contribute to the spread of Covid-19. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) has issued a statewide stay-at-home order, but decisions to close beaches or other public places were left to individual counties.

“Certainly this is a national emergency. It’s a state emergency. I think without question the county has authority to take whatever measures they think are necessary to meet that need as long as it’s narrowly tailored,” Senior Judge Roger Vinson of the Northern District of Florida at Pensacola said during a teleconference hearing.

Any harm to the property owners is temporary, Vinson said. “It’s a harm that’s relatively minimal compared to the balancing of harms that might result if you have exposure to a communicable virus,” he said. Vinson was appointed to the bench by President Ronald Reagan in 1983 and took senior status in 2005.

Under Florida law, privately owned beaches extend to the mean high-water line. In a separate case, Huckabee and other Walton County landowners have sought to block public access to beaches behind their homes along the Gulf of Mexico.

An attorney for Huckabee and the other property owners, Kent Safriet of Hopping Green & Sams in Tallahassee, said during the hearing that the ordinance was counterproductive and forcing his clients from their “back yards” to mingle with the public elsewhere, including increasingly crowded bike paths in front of the homes.

The county had an obligation to safeguard public health because of the open nature of Gulf Coast beaches and the “fuzzy boundary” between public and private lands, Bill Warner, the Panama City-based attorney for the county, said during the hearing.

The case isDodero v. Walton County, N.D. Fla., No. 3:20-cv-05358, 4/13/20