Center for Water Policy Director, Professor, and Lynde B. Uihlein Endowed Chair Melissa Scanlan was quoted in a recent WUWM story about public access to Wisconsin’s Great Lakes beaches. In summer 2025, the Village of Shorewood police issued resident Paul Florsheim a ticket for trespassing when walking the shoreline of Lake Michigan on what he viewed as “the public part” of the beach. Florsheim is challenging the ticket in municipal court, arguing that he was walking below the ordinary high-water mark and exercising his Wisconsin Constitutional rights under the Public Trust Doctrine.
Professor Scanlan noted that in the two other Great Lakes states that have considered similar beach walking challenges, the Michigan and Indiana supreme courts ruled that the Public Trust Doctrine protects the public’s right to walk on Great Lakes’ beaches between the water and ordinary high-water mark.
Read the full article from WUWM here: Shorewood resident takes Lake Michigan shoreline access to court
And check out some of the Center’s Public Trust Doctrine research here!