US high court urged to overturn the Indiana Lake Michigan decision

Porter, Indiana – Three landowners who own property along the Lake Michigan shoreline in northwest Indiana have petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn an Indiana high court decision from 2018 that stated the shoreline is state property and is there for the public’s benefit.

The plaintiffs from the town of Porter contend that their property titles include a private beach on the lake and that the loss of their ability to exclude others from “their” beach is illegal without just compensation from the government in their petition seeking the Supreme Court to reconsider the matter.

After the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago determined in May that the Porter County property owners lacked standing to challenge the Indiana Supreme Court’s 2018 judgment and a 2020 state law that formalized that decision in federal court, the property owners petitioned the high court.

According to that ruling, the plaintiffs never had ownership of a private beach on the lake since Indiana has owned the area beneath Lake Michigan and the nearby shoreline up to the usual high water mark since the state’s founding in 1816.

According to The (Northwest Indiana) Times, a decision on whether the U.S. Supreme Court will hear the case will probably be made in the first few months of 2019. Every year, the high court receives between 7,000 and 8,000 review applications, and it denies all but around 80 of them.