A California court has ordered a Silicon Valley billionaire to restore access to a beloved beach that he closed off for his private use, a major victory for public lands advocates who have been fighting the venture capitalist for years. 
 
 An appeals court ruled on Thursday that Vinod Khosla, who runs the venture capital firm Khosla Ventures and co-founded the tech company Sun Microsystems, must unlock the gates to Martins Beach in northern California by his property. 
 
 The decision is a major blow to Khosla and other wealthy landowners who have increasingly tried to buy up the internationally celebrated beaches along the California coast and turn public lands into private property. 
 
 The beach was a popular destination for fishing, surfing and other recreational activities for nearly a century, and the previous owners provided a general store and public restroom. But Khosla eventually bought the property and in 2010 closed public access, putting up signs warning against trespassing. 
 
 Khosla, who has a net worth of $1.55bn and does not live on the property, has faced multiple lawsuits and legislative efforts to get him to open up the gate to the beach near Half Moon Bay, about 30 miles south of San Francisco. The law in California states that all beaches should be open to the public up to the “mean high tide line”. 
 
 The decision this week, affirming a lower court ruling, stems from a lawsuit filed by the Surfrider Foundation, a not-for-profit group that says the case could have broader implications for beach access across the US. 
 
 “Vinod Khosla, with his billions of dollars, bought this piece of property and said, ‘No, no, the public isn’t going to use this anymore. End of story,’” the Surfrider attorney Joe Cotchett said by phone on Thursday. “He got away with it for many years … This is probably one of the most important public right-of-access cases in the country.” 
 
 Khosla’s refusal to restore access has made him something of a symbol of the immense wealth in the tech industry and rising income inequality in the region. 
 
 Last year, his attorneys claimed that he would open the gate to the beach only if the government paid him $30m, an amount that state officials said was unreasonably high. In October, Khosla also sued two state agencies, accusing the government of using “coercion and harassment” to infringe on his private property rights. 
 
 The California coastal commission, established by voters in 1972 to protect public use of the coast, has reported that beachgoers have increasingly complained about private security guards telling them they are trespassing on private property and forcing them to leave the public beaches. 
 
 “The issue here is, can wealthy private individuals buy up our beautiful beaches for their own use?” said Cotchett, adding that he expects Khosla to appeal the decision and attempt to bring the case to the US supreme court. 
 
 Khosla’s attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 
 
 Khosla recently made headlines when he downplayed the problem of sexual harassment in the venture capital industry, which has recently been exposed as a major concern among female founders. “I did not know that there was any discrimination,” Khosla said at a recent event, adding that it was “rarer than in most other businesses”. ||||| Silicon Valley venture capitalist Vinod Khosla sues two California agencies as part of protracted legal battle over public access to beach on his property 
 
 Silicon Valley venture capitalist and billionaire Vinod Khosla, who has been engaged in a legal battle over public access to a beloved surfing beach that sits on his land, is suing two state agencies accusing them of using “coercion and harassment” to take away his private property rights – an allegation one campaign group describes as “absurd”. 
 
 Khosla, who has a net worth of $1.55bn, co-founded the technology company Sun Microsystems and now runs the venture capital firm Khosla Ventures. In 2008, he bought a 53-acre section of Martins Beach near Half Moon Bay, about 30 miles south of San Francisco. 
 
 In California, all beaches are open to the public up to the “mean high tide line”, broadly defined as the portion of the beach where the sand is wet. 
 
 To honor this, the previous owners of the land had given members of the public access to the beach via a private road, charging a fee for parking. It was a popular spot for fishing, picnicking and surfing. 
 
 Silicon Valley billionaire demands $30m to restore access to former public beach Read more 
 
 When Khosla took over the property, he initially continued to allow public access, but in 2010 he closed the gate and painted over the billboard welcoming people to the beach. This prompted multiple lawsuits from campaign groups seeking continued access to Martins Beach and the introduction of new state legislation. 
 
 Khosla’s lawyers have now filed a suit against the California coastal commission, state lands commission and San Mateo County, claiming that state and local officials have unfairly and irrationally targeted Khosla to force him to either keep the beach road open year-round for a small entrance fee or apply for a permit to close the beach. 
 
 Filed on 30 September, the complaint argues that both commissions and San Mateo County have engaged “in an intentional course of conduct to harass, coerce and single out” the owners of the land and “frustrate their legitimate private property rights for purely personal and political reasons”. Such conduct violates Khosla’s constitutional rights, the complaint states. 
 
 Khosla’s lawyers point out that the Deeney family, which owned the property from the 1900s to 2008, was not subject to the same scrutiny. It was the Deeney family who installed a fence, locked gate and “no trespassing” signs, and they would lock the gate to close the road to the beach “any time they felt like it”. 
 
 “It was routinely closed for private events and in the winter. They did not apply for a permit and were never told by any public official or entity that a permit was required,” said Khosla’s attorney, Dori Yob, in a statement. 
 
 “However, when the subsequent owner continued these practices they were met with threats and harassment in an attempt to coerce them to forfeit their private property rights and allow public access to the property on terms of the County and Coastal Commission’s choosing,” she added. 
 
 Yob also said there had been “extensive misreporting” in the media about the case, including the assertion, first made in the New York Times, that Khosla offered to sell access rights to the beach for $30m. “There was never an offer to sell,” she said. 
 
 Yob points out that the Deeney family sold the property because it was unprofitable and that the state had an opportunity to buy it but decided not to. “Now it wants for free what they did not want to pay for,” Yob said. 
 
 The Surfrider Foundation, a group that has campaigned to restore public access to the beach, disagrees with Yob’s interpretation of events. 
 
 “To allege unfair treatment is absurd,” said the foundation’s legal director, Angela Howe, in a statement. “Khosla is merely being asked by the county, state lands commission and coastal commission to follow the law and honor the beach access rights of California citizens.” 
 
 “I don’t know how state agencies could harass and coerce such a powerful man,” she added in a phone interview. “It’s almost laughable.” 
 
 The Deeneys wanted people to enjoy the beach and worked with local officials to make that possible, she said. Khosla is being treated differently than the Deeney family because he acted very differently – with “total disregard” for the public’s right to access and enjoy the beach. 
 
 “Martins Beach is part of the fabric of the community of Half Moon Bay and has been open for generations to the public,” said Howe. 
 
 “As San Francisco is becoming gentrified, you are getting a lot of money from Silicon Valley taking away public resources. This makes it especially offensive to the everyman.”
– In California, the public essentially has the right to access the portion of the beach that gets wet. But with a great deal of coastal development, how one gets to this public strip of land can be far murkier, as a new lawsuit involving a private property near Half Moon Bay demonstrates. In 2008, Silicon Valley billionaire Vinod Khosla, who co-founded Sun Microsystems, bought 53 acres of Martins Beach, which sits just south of San Francisco; two years later, he decided to close the gate and paint over the billboard that had directed beachgoers (it's a popular surfing spot) to a for-a-fee parking area the previous owners had set up, reports the Guardian. In other words, the former owners played nice, and Khosla didn't want to play at all. In his lawsuit filed Sept. 30, Khosla accuses the California Coastal Commission, State Lands Commission, and San Mateo County of unfairly targeting him. The San Jose Mercury News explains that the latter two bodies informed Khosla that what he did in revoking the beach access fits the Coastal Act's definition of development, which means he needs to apply for a coastal development permit. Khosla says the agencies are trying "to harass, coerce, and single [him] out" and says they never interfered when the prior owners locked the gate during winter months or private events. The legal director for the Surfrider Foundation, which has filed its own lawsuit to restore public access to the beach, calls it "almost laughable" that Khosla would claim "state agencies could harass and coerce such a powerful man." (Check out the nation's best beaches.)