COLUMBUS, Ohio – Environmental preservationists hope a U.S. Supreme Court ruling this week will increase the public's ownership along Lake Erie's shoreline -- an issue currently in front of Ohio's highest court.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday unanimously ruled that a Florida state beach restoration program did not violate the rights of waterfront property owners. Environmentalists in Ohio viewed the decision as a victory because it placed protection of the coastline above individual property rights.

"This could send some important political shock waves," said Jack Shaner, deputy director of the Ohio Environmental Council. "The Ohio Supreme Court, we hope, will pay attention to what the U.S. Supreme Court said."

Others, however, say the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling is irrelevant.

State Sen. Tim Grendell, who has been an advocate for personal property rights, said the ruling applies only to ocean waters, which are legally known as "tidal" waters.

"The same rules don't apply to non-tidal waters like Lake Erie," Grendell, a Republican from Chester Township, said.

At stake in the case before the Ohio Supreme Court are the rights of lakefront property owners who say the property boundary is the water's edge.

A group of those property owners sued the state because it had tried to place the boundary at a high-water level determined more than two decades ago.

Under former Gov. Bob Taft, the Ohio Department of Natural Resources began charging lakefront property owners a lease to place docks out into the waters of Lake Erie. That practice prompted the lawsuit.

The boundary the state wanted to use would move the property ownership line into people's backyards, a lawyer for the landowners said.

Those landowners won a partial victory in 2007 when a Lake County judge decided the Lake Erie shoreline is the boundary separating public and private property. Judge Eugene Lucci said the state could have unjustly taken private land without compensation if the high water mark boundary had been used.

An appeals court upheld the decision last August. The state appealed the decision, and the Ohio Supreme Court agreed to hear the case. A decision is months away, said a spokeswoman for Attorney General Richard Cordray, who is representing the state.

Shaner, whose organization is a co-defendant with the state in the case, said the previous rulings are out of touch with mainstream thinking. The U.S. Supreme Court ruling could change that, he said.

The Florida case stemmed from a project to restore beaches in Florida that had been damaged by hurricanes. The government wanted to add 75 feet of sand to counter the erosion of the beaches. Nearby property owners argued the restoration project infringed their property rights. The Supreme Court disagreed.

Trent Dougherty, a staff attorney for the Ohio Environmental Council, said the ruling this week put a spotlight on the importance of maintaining a healthy coast along Lake Erie.

"To protect the coast for 11 million outweighs the property rights of one person," Dougherty said.