In an argument studded with references to spring break, amusement parks and hot dog vendors, the Supreme Court on Wednesday struggled with that issue.
The main question in the case was whether the Florida Supreme Court violated the Constitution’s takings clause in a decision last year when, as a lawyer for the owners put it, it turned “oceanfront property into ocean-view property.”
The takings clause says the government may not take private property for public use without just compensation. The Supreme Court has never ruled on whether a court’s interpretation of state law can amount to a taking.
But much of the argument on Wednesday leapfrogged that threshold question and concerned the nature and value of the property rights retained by six affected property owners in the Florida Panhandle.
“You didn’t lose one inch,” Justice Stephen G. Breyer told the lawyer for the owners, D. Kent Safriet. “All you lost was the right to touch the water. But the court here says you in effect have that right because you can walk right over it and get to the water.”
The new strip of land is as wide as 75 feet in places, and the public has access to it.
“If somebody wanted to put up a hot dog stand on this new land,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. asked, “would you have the right to tell them they can’t?”
“Absolutely not,” Mr. Safriet answered.
Justice Breyer said the relevant law did protect the owners’ right to enjoy their land in peace, meaning they could at a minimum ban “a noisy hot dog stand that keeps you up at night.”
Justice Antonin Scalia found the middle ground, as it were. “You can have quiet hot dog stands during the daytime,” he said.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor added that even before the beach project, “a hot dog stand could have sat in the water.”
Justice Scalia suggested that the owners might have lost something of substantial value. “People pay a lot more money for beachfront homes,” he said, than they do for “a house behind the beach at Coney Island.”
Still, Justice Scalia added, the wider beach and the protection from erosion and hurricanes it provided had value, too. “I’m not sure it’s a bad deal,” he said.
Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. said that the owners might have more to fear than a lone hot dog vendor, wet or dry. “You could have televised spring-break parties in front of somebody’s house,” Justice Alito said.
Scott D. Makar, Florida’s solicitor general, said existing legislation would not permit that.
Justice Scalia said there was nothing to prevent such law and proposed a name for it: “the Spring-Break Act of 2010.”
Chief Justice Roberts went further, asking a lawyer for the federal government, appearing in support of the state, whether the state was free to build an amusement park on the land.
The lawyer, Edwin S. Kneedler, said Florida law would not allow that. “You maintain a right of view, a right against unreasonable interference,” he said of the affected property owners.
It is the Roberts court’s first major takings case. Kelo v. City of New London, a 2005 decision that allowed local governments to use the power of eminent domain to take private property for business development, was one of the Rehnquist court’s most controversial rulings.
Justice John Paul Stevens was absent on Wednesday, an indication that he had disqualified himself from the case. He owns an apartment in a beachfront building in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
Justice Stevens wrote the majority decision in Kelo, which was decided by a 5-to-4 vote. Although there have been shifts in court personnel since then, his apparent disqualification raises the possibility of a 4-to-4 tie in the case heard Wednesday, Stop the Beach Renourishment v. Florida Department of Environmental Protection, No. 08-1151.
A tie would automatically affirm the lower court’s decision, meaning the property owners would lose.