The Wisconsin Lake Michigan beach access lawsuit now pending in Milwaukee County Circuit Court is the first case to squarely ask whether the public can walk along the state’s Great Lakes shorelines in front of private property. For now, the answer under Wisconsin law is no. A 1923 Wisconsin Supreme Court decision gives lakefront owners exclusive control of the dry sand between the water’s edge and the ordinary high water mark, and in January 2026 a Shorewood municipal judge applied that rule to convict a beach walker of trespassing. His appeal is the vehicle his lawyers hope will carry the question to the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
What Wisconsin Law Says Right Now
The controlling case is Doemel v. Jantz, decided by the Wisconsin Supreme Court in 1923. A Lake Winnebago property owner sued a man who had crossed the exposed shore between the high and low water marks. The state intervened on the walker’s side, arguing the strip was held in public trust. The court sided with the owner and held that “the public has no right of passage over dry land between low and high-water mark but the exclusive use is in the riparian owner.”
That ruling has not been disturbed in a century. Under it, the public trust doctrine written into Wisconsin’s constitution protects water-based activities: boating, fishing, swimming. Walking on exposed sand is not one of them, even when the sand sits below the ordinary high water mark that the Department of Natural Resources uses as its regulatory line.
The practical consequence is that a person walking the Lake Michigan shoreline in Wisconsin can be cited for trespassing the moment they pass in front of a private lot, regardless of how far the water has receded.
The Case That Could Change It
In late July 2025, Paul Florsheim, a 66-year-old clinical psychologist and University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee professor, was walking along the Lake Michigan shoreline just north of Atwater Beach in Shorewood. He passed onto the sand in front of a home on the 4000 block of North Lake Drive owned by Daniel Domagala, a prosthodontist who also teaches at the Marquette University School of Dentistry. The lot sits two properties north of the public swimming beach at Atwater Park.
Domagala confronted Florsheim and called the Shorewood Police Department. Florsheim, who had walked past “no trespassing” signs and had received earlier police warnings about the stretch of shoreline, was issued a citation with a $313 fine. Domagala testified that he had called police at least 50 times during the summer of 2025 about people on the beach in front of his home, which he monitors with surveillance cameras and alarms.
Florsheim chose to fight the ticket. The case went to trial on December 2, 2025, in Shorewood Municipal Court before Judge Margo Kirchner. Representing himself, Florsheim argued that Wisconsin’s public trust doctrine protects the public’s right to access the shoreline up to the ordinary high water mark and that walking along the beach is a form of navigation. The village, represented by Village Attorney Kevin Landgraf, argued that the doctrine did not reach dry sand and pointed to Doemel.
On January 28, 2026, Judge Kirchner found Florsheim guilty and ordered him to pay the $313 fine. She wrote that the activities protected by the public trust doctrine in Wisconsin are “solely water-based” and that no Wisconsin case has ever held that walking on the beach counts as navigation. She acknowledged that the precedent might be “ripe for being overruled” but said a municipal court judge had no authority to do that. Only an appellate court or the state supreme court could.
The Appeal and What Happens Next
On February 12, 2026, Midwest Environmental Advocates, a nonprofit environmental law center, filed an appeal on Florsheim’s behalf in Milwaukee County Circuit Court, five days before the February 17 deadline. Senior staff attorney Rob Lee said the case “raises fundamental questions about how Wisconsin’s public trust doctrine applies to accessing the Great Lakes, questions the Wisconsin Supreme Court has never answered.”
The appeal is docketed as Village of Shorewood v. Paul W. Florsheim, Case No. 26CV1769. On April 21, 2026, Judge J.D. Watts filed a memorandum narrowing the dispute to a single legal question: whether the Village of Shorewood has the legal authority to regulate land between the ordinary high water mark and the water’s edge. A status hearing is set for August 13, 2026, at which the court is expected to set a briefing schedule and may issue a decision.
Florsheim and his legal team have said their goal is to push the case to the Wisconsin Supreme Court and directly challenge Doemel v. Jantz. A circuit court cannot overrule the 1923 decision on its own, so a loss at either level would set up the further appeal his lawyers want.
Why the High Water Mark Matters
The Wisconsin DNR defines the ordinary high water mark as the point where the presence and action of water leaves a distinct mark through erosion, destruction of vegetation, or other recognizable signs. The DNR regulates activity below that line. The state constitution declares navigable waters “common highways and forever free.” Florsheim’s argument is that those public rights should reach the full strip below the high water mark, not stop at the waterline.
On Lake Michigan the distinction is not abstract. Lake levels fluctuate year to year, and in low-water periods like 2025 the gap between the water’s edge and the high water mark can be wide. If the courts adopt Florsheim’s reading, thousands of acres of Wisconsin shoreline that private owners currently treat as their own would be open to public foot traffic. If they don’t, the walkable public beach in Wisconsin ends where the next private lot begins.
How Other Great Lakes States Handle It
Wisconsin is an outlier. Of the eight states bordering the Great Lakes, three have formally addressed beach walking rights: Indiana, Michigan, and New York. All three recognize a public right to walk along Great Lakes beaches below the high water mark.
The Indiana Supreme Court ruled unanimously in 2018 that the state’s Lake Michigan shorelands are publicly owned and held in trust for the public. The case was brought by Long Beach property owners who wanted to exclude the public from the shoreline in front of their homes; the court rejected their claim in what has been described as the most expansive state affirmation of the public trust doctrine along the Great Lakes.
Michigan’s Supreme Court reached a similar result and, in doing so, borrowed Wisconsin’s own definition of the ordinary high water mark to draw the line. The Michigan dissenters warned that the standard would create uncertainty about property boundaries. The same walk that produced Florsheim’s citation in Shorewood would have been legal on the Michigan or Indiana side of the lake.