Author: Nellie Bowles / Source: New York Times
SAN FRANCISCO — It was a happy day for the Silicon Valley venture capitalist Vinod Khosla: He lost his battle.
On Monday, the United States Supreme Court refused to hear Mr. Khosla’s appeal to overturn a ruling that the beach access path cutting through a coastal village he owns near Half Moon Bay, Calif.
, must stay open.Now Mr. Khosla, a billionaire who founded Sun Microsystems and helped lay the foundations of the consumer internet, has to apply for a permit to close the narrow road down to a popular surfing spot known as Martin’s Beach. That’s it.
But over nearly a decade in the courts, the battle became deeply symbolic to Mr. Khosla, who has said he was fighting on principle to stop a violation of property rights. So why was he likely to be happy he lost? He has said he never wanted to win.
As the case wound its way up to the Supreme Court, it threatened to gut California’s Coastal Act of 1976, which enshrines public access to beaches as a right.
“If I were to ever win in the Supreme Court, I’d be depressed about it,” he told The New York Times this year. “I support the Coastal Act; I don’t want to weaken it by winning. But property rights are even more important.”
The situation began shortly after 2008 when Mr. Khosla bought a 53-acre hillside on the Northern California coast. It had about 47 cottages on it and was known as Martin’s Beach. While the previous owners had largely left the gate to the beach…
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