Coastal Rhode Island property owner seeks preliminary injunction to stop state’s land grab
July 22, 2025
South Kingstown, Rhode Island; July 22, 2025: After filing a lawsuit earlier this month, a coastal property owner is seeking a preliminary injunction against Rhode Island’s Coastal Resources Management Council (CRMC) to stop the agency from taking his private property. David Welch, owner of Stilts LLC, filed the motion after the CRMC attached unconstitutional conditions to a maintenance permit for the company’s small beachfront home.
“The government can’t hold property owners hostage, demanding they surrender their constitutional rights just to get a permit to maintain their own home,” said J. David Breemer, a senior attorney at Pacific Legal Foundation. “Rhode Island is essentially coercing property owners: give up your land and your Fourth Amendment protections, or you can’t repair storm damage to your own house.”
After a storm damaged stairs, displaced protective boulders, and harmed dunes around his elevated beachfront home, Welch sought a routine maintenance permit. But the state agency attached two unprecedented conditions that bear no relationship to the proposed work.
First, Welch must allow “public access to ten feet inland of the recognizable high tide line” on his private property — effectively creating a public easement across private land. Second, the agency and its agents can inspect the property “at all times,” including “all times thereafter” construction is complete.
Some of these conditions mirror Rhode Island’s controversial 2023 shoreline access law, which a Superior Court judge already ruled unconstitutional as a taking of private property. Despite that ruling and ongoing litigation at the Rhode Island Supreme Court (also brought by David Welch), the coastal agency has begun routinely imposing the same “public access” condition on coastal permits statewide, without any individualized analysis of whether such conditions relate to specific proposed work.
If granted, the preliminary injunction will allow Welch to make necessary repairs to his house without being forced to give up his private property.
The case is Stilts, LLC v. Rhode Island Coastal Resources Management Council.
About Pacific Legal Foundation
Pacific Legal Foundation is a national nonprofit law firm that defends Americans threatened by government overreach and abuse. Since our founding in 1973, we challenge the government when it violates individual liberty and constitutional rights. With active cases in 34 states plus Washington, D.C., PLF represents clients in state and federal courts, with 18 wins of 20 cases litigated at the U.S. Supreme Court.