Wisconsin beach ticket becomes test of public shoreline access

A retired University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee professor is challenging a $313 trespassing ticket issued after he walked along a Lake Michigan beach in Shorewood, Wisconsin. Fortune reported that Paul Florsheim sees the case as part of a broader fight over public access to water, beaches and other shared resources.

Florsheim has walked the Shorewood shoreline for decades, according to Fortune. The village cited him last year after a neighbor, described by Fortune as a dentist with a boathouse on the beach, reported walkers to police.

The case is now in Milwaukee County Circuit Court, with a hearing scheduled for Aug. 13, Fortune reported. Florsheim hopes the dispute eventually reaches the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

A Wisconsin rule at the center of the case

Wisconsin recognizes the Ordinary High Water Mark as the boundary for public ownership along waterways, Fortune reported. But unlike some states that allow people to cross private beachfront to reach public water, Wisconsin gives shoreline property owners control over the exposed strip of beach above that line, according to Fortune.

The citation relies on a 1923 Wisconsin Supreme Court decision, Doemel v. Jantz, Fortune reported. Florsheim told Fortune he researched the case and found it arose from a dispute over a dairy farmer moving cattle across private land to reach public water on Lake Winnebago.

A municipal judge ruled against Florsheim in January, according to Fortune. The judge wrote a 16-page opinion saying she was bound by Doemel but that the precedent likely should be reconsidered, Fortune reported.

Florsheim’s lawyers filed a circuit court brief on June 22 arguing that the land he walked on belongs to Wisconsin and the public, not to his neighbor, according to Fortune. Florsheim told Fortune that public beach access is protected by the state’s public trust doctrine.

Texas beach access fight adds pressure

Fortune linked the Wisconsin dispute to a June 19 Texas Supreme Court ruling involving Boca Chica Beach, where SpaceX conducts rocket launches. The court unanimously ruled that SaveRGV, the Sierra Club and the Carrizo/Comecrudo Nation of Texas lacked standing to challenge beach closures tied to SpaceX operations, Fortune reported.

The Texas court did not decide whether a 2009 constitutional amendment protecting public beach access outweighed a 2013 law written for SpaceX, according to Fortune. Attorney Marisa Perales, who represented the groups, told Fortune that the public was left without a remedy to enforce access rights.

Boca Chica Beach is an undeveloped eight-mile Gulf Coast beach near Brownsville, Texas, Fortune reported. The area is known locally as “poor man’s beach,” and SpaceX’s Starbase launch towers stand nearby.

Fortune reported that SpaceX employees voted in 2025 to incorporate the area as the city of Starbase, while county officials gave the municipality authority to close the beach during launches. In February, Starbase officials voted to annex 7,133 acres near the beach, much of it within the Boca Chica Wildlife Refuge, according to Fortune.

Water demand from data centers

Florsheim also pointed to data center growth in the Great Lakes region as another example of pressure on shared resources, Fortune reported. More than 220 data centers are planned across the region, which contains 21% of the world’s surface freshwater, according to Fortune.

Microsoft is investing $20 billion in data centers in Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin, a community that can divert Great Lakes water, Fortune reported. Midwest Environmental Advocates, the nonprofit representing Florsheim, sued after Racine, Wisconsin, withheld public records on a data center’s water use for seven months, according to Fortune.

Fortune reported that fewer than one-third of data centers track water use, and that Great Lakes reporting requirements fall on public water systems rather than the companies drawing the water. Florsheim told Fortune he plans to keep walking the beach while his appeal proceeds.

This story draws on original reporting from Fortune.