> If this is upheld it could have some interesting repercussions on water rights in the Central Valley > if I remember, some of those were parts of Mexican land grants as well.

That's both news to me and a wincing moment of "wow, California politics really do come down to water issues 90% of the time".

I don't see why the reasoning didn't go like the following.

California law requires the property owner to give up rights. The eminent-domain laws require the state to compensate property owners when forcing them to give up rights.

Conclusion: The property owner must allow beach access to the public, and the state must pay the property owner for allowing this.

EDIT: The comment by gojomo would seem to explain this.

So this whole ordeal is pretty confusing. State law says that the public is allowed access to the coast below the median high tide line, but it does not necessarily give you the right to cross through private land. So technically, you could boat or swim over to Martins Beach and you wouldn't be trespassing. However because the previous owner allowed public access (for a small fee), I guess he set some precedent to access which is covered by state law (although apparently treaties with Mexico supercede that).

To make things even weirder, there are a bunch of cottages/houses on the property that are being leased to occupants (this was done by the previous owner). From what I understand, they have a few more years on those leases before they can be evicted (I am very rough on these details). So if you know someone in those units, they can hook you up with access to the beach (I think).

Bascially, it's a crappy situation for everyone. I get that Khosla wants some private beach front property to dump his money into. And really, the previous owner should have set up an easement (easements are the primary reason Malibu is still publicly accessible), although he probably would have got a much lower sales price. And of course, if Khosla gets his way, the public will be getting screwed over pretty bad. With the growing population, beach/coastal access is getting harder and harder (try going to the beach on a warm, sunny weekend, it can be a parking/traffic nightmare). Reducing the number of coastal access points is just going to make things worse, and it is going to continue to have an impact on the next generation of Californians.

>Khosla may yet want to cede this claim, even if it's legally legitimate, to not appear like a robber baron buying up eccentric anti-democratic privileges that were created by ancient wars.

For the sake of the community and historic use he should restore the access rights that were there. It is the right thing...but, hey, it's his property.

I don't get it, from my understanding they clipped (somehow in a geometric sense) an international treaty with a constitution, normally it's sorry for the treaty.