06/24/2025
DESANTIS SIGNS BILL IN WALTON COUNTY: Governor Ron DeSantis signed legislation Tuesday morning related to Customary Use. DeSantis signed Senate Bill 1622 at Shunk Gulley Oyster Bar in Santa Rosa Beach, surrounded by state legislators and local officials who championed the measure.
“Senate Bill 1622 will repeal the burdensome state mandates and return decision making power to local governments when it comes to recognizing recreational customary use of beaches,” DeSantis said during the signing ceremony.
The legislation repeals a 2018 law that prohibited local governments from affirming public recreational use of dry sand areas on private beaches without first going through a complex and costly judicial process. That law particularly affected Walton County, which had adopted a customary use ordinance in October 2016, just months after the state’s cutoff date.
“Back in 2018, when the state passed a law that blocked local governments from recognizing customary use of beaches, no one felt that impact more severely than Walton County,” said Senator Jay Trumbull, who sponsored the legislation. “Overnight, people who had walked the same stretch of beach for generations were being told that they were trespassing.”
