(The Center Square) – A Navy veteran and surf school owner has reached a settlement that allows him to teach paid lessons in Newport Beach.
Jason Murchison, owner of Learn to Surf, will operate under a five-year agreement with Newport Beach. Those are the same terms granted by Newport Beach to three other City-approved surf schools.
Murchison, who went to federal court with help from Pacific Legal Foundation, said it feels great to move forward.
“I couldn’t be happier to put this behind me and get back to what I love to do: teach people to surf and grow the business I worked so hard to build,” Murchison told The Center Square via email. “I didn’t ask for special treatment; I just wanted the same opportunity as everyone else.”
Pacific Legal Foundation attorney Caleb Trotter said that, prior to Jason’s case, the City of Newport Beach decided that three surf-schools was enough.
However, Trotter said the city never had any basis for that conclusion.
“All that I could glean from the city staff report that was put together when this ordinance was proposed, was they just didn’t like the fact that people were earning money on city property,” Trotter told The Center Square in a phone interview. “Well, they can like it or not, but what they can’t do is violate the constitution in creating a monopoly in granting the right to earn a living on city property, which is effectively what they did.”
According to Trotter, two of the three surf schools operate for only a few months in the summer. That left only one company with the ability to give year-round surf instruction.
It was this issue that Murchison challenged.
While this may be a story in an area southeast of Los Angeles, Trotter said that people in other parts of California and beyond should pay attention.
“Anyone, anywhere in the country that faces a government law or restriction or ordinance that says you can’t teach people how to do things, there is potentially a strong constitutional claim to that, whether it’s teaching surfing or yoga or horseshoeing,” said Trotter. “Those are all cases that people have brought in and won on, and so this is the kind of thing that I think if people look hard enough, they’re going to run into it all around the country.”
The case is known as Jason Murchison v. City of Newport Beach, CA. It was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California Southern Division.
The Center Square reached out to Newport Beach for comment and did not receive a response.
