The Surfrider Foundation applauds the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection’s (NJDEP) decision to uphold the rights of the beachgoing public by ordering Ocean Grove, NJ to end their practice of closing the beach every summer Sunday morning.
The Chapter issued a press release on September 26, 2023, alerting the New Jersey public to a spate of beach closures and access issues in northern NJ that cropped up in late summer, including at Bradshaw’s and Jenkinson’s beaches in Point Pleasant, Seaside Heights, and the Sunday beach closure at Ocean Grove. The Chapter went on to release seven press releases in total, adding media coverage to the issue, and doing several interviews.
On December 23, 2025, NJDEP issued a final decision upholding their own October 12, 2023 Administrative Order, which required the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association (OGCMA) to stop closing their beaches from 9AM to noon every Sunday morning from May to September, in accordance with Ocean Grove's Coastal Area Facilities Review Act (CAFRA) permit. OGCMA had appealed the October 2023 Administrative Order.
“Coastal access is a fundamental right in New Jersey,” said Jeffrey Ross Williams, Legislative Director for the Jersey Shore Chapter of the Surfrider Foundation. “The State’s decision rejects attempts by private property owners to block beachgoers from the beach. While DEP articulated the centuries-long history and evolution of the Public Trust Doctrine in NJ, as a practical matter, accessing the beach on Sunday mornings does not interfere with OGCMA Sunday religious services. Not only are there hundreds of people on the boardwalk on Sunday mornings but, even more importantly, the beach dunes are so high in Ocean Grove that the beach, ocean, and even the horizon can’t be seen from the boardwalk. Thus any argument that beachgoers would interfere with religious practices on Sunday morning is a complete fiction,” said Williams.
For decades--and despite public outcry--the OGCMA has prohibited access to the beach before noon on Sundays from Memorial Day weekend through Labor Day weekend, recently physically chaining and locking all beach access stairways.
In 2023, local citizens from Neptune Township, which encompasses Ocean Grove, organized in opposition to the Sunday morning beach closure policy, which galvanized support from the public to end the practice.
In October 2023, the NJDEP issued OGCMA an Administrative Order to immediately cease its Sunday morning beach closures. OGCMA then appealed the order, but NJDEP denied OGCMA’s request for a stay of the order pending resolution of that appeal, meaning OGCMA had to keep its beaches open on summer Sundays in 2024 and 2025. This decision was upheld by the Superior Court of New Jersey Appellate decision in June of 2024.
From the NJDEP Order: “The Permittee [OGCMA] cannot limit vertical or horizontal public access to any dry sand beach area…nor interfere with the public's right to free use of the dry sand for intermittent recreational purposes connected with the ocean and wet sand."