05/12/2026
For decades, John and Marcella Seidensticker have lived in the same condo in Dana Point, California. The building is aging. They want to tear it down and put up something safer, modern, built for the weather a coastal home should expect. The architect agreed to design it. The contractor agreed to build it. Their neighbors did not object. The city, after reviewing the plans, told them they could proceed.
The California Coastal Commission, which sits between the city and the ocean and which neither John nor Marcella ever met, took more than three years to review the same project. When it finally answered, the answer came with fifteen "special conditions." Among them: the Seidenstickers must agree, in writing, not to defend the home against storm damage, and they must commit, in advance, to demolish the home on demand from any government agency, at their own expense, without compensation. On May 7, they filed in federal court, represented at no charge by the Pacific Legal Foundation.
What we share is what the Philosophy of Human Respect names in this story, even before the litigation runs its course. The voluntary cooperation here is not the city's "yes." Voluntary cooperation is the work the architect agreed to do, the price the contractor agreed to honor, the neighbors who looked at the plans and saw nothing worth objecting to, and the patience the Seidenstickers brought to the years of waiting. That practice is the everyday substance of a healthy community. The commission's fifteen conditions are something else. They are pre-consent to injury, extracted as the price of being allowed to continue what people who actually live near the project had already agreed was reasonable.
We are glad Pacific Legal Foundation is in this case. We are glad John and Marcella have decades of patience and a little more left. And we are paying attention, because what this case decides will shape what thousands of other coastal families are required to surrender before they can repair or replace what is theirs.
