In fact, the opposite is true, and the reporting around this issue is a great example of how the media doesn't care about facts but instead cares only about narratives.

It's important to understand that this dispute involves two separate tracks of issues, one where Khosla has been winning, and one where he has been losing.

The first issue is the property right. An ancient doctrine called the "public trust" doctrine holds that the waters and beaches up to the high tide line belongs to the public. Moreover, it holds that, generally, there is an easement across private land to access that area.

However, California is a johnny-come-lately state. As a result, under Supreme Court precedent (Summa Corp. v. California), the state doesn't have easements over certain private property that dates to Mexican land grants: https://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?art... (p. 429-430). Based on that precedent, the California Court of Appeals has held that there is no easement (as a matter of public trust doctrine) over Khosla's property:

> While the public trust doctrine can protect access rights over private land, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to extend that protection to private land certified under the 1851 federal law implementing the Treaty of Guadalupe
Hidalgo, where the federal or state government had not asserted an interest in title proceeding. Therefore, the court of appeal in Friends I found that, because
the Martin’s Beach property had been certified under the 1851 law without any mention of a public interest and never passed into state ownership, there could be no common law public trust easement over the land to the water.

There was a subsequent suit based on an alternate theory: that although there was no common law easement, an easement arose because the previous property owner "dedicated" the road to public use. The California Court of Appeals rejected that t heory too. https://www.jurist.org/news/2019/11/ca-appellate-court-rules....

> As such, according to the common law of public dedication, the court determined that Martin’s Beach is not dedicated to public access.

Opinion here: https://www.courts.ca.gov/opinions/nonpub/A154022.PDF

So now we are on the third string legal theory (from the article):

> State officials have been following these cases closely and are now taking a swing at the fight. The new lawsuit asks the court to consider unexamined evidence that shows that the beach, as well as the gated road, have been historically used by the public — citing a common law doctrine known as “implied dedication.”

We've gone from an easement under property law, to a "public dedication," to "implied public dedication."

That brings us to the second legal issue, which is whether Khosla needs a permit to build a structure to close the road to the beach. Even though courts have repeatedly held that there is no public right to use the road, the California Coastal Commission has found that it can use its powers to control development on the coast to keep Khosla from actually vindicating his private property right. So far, the State has been successful on that front. But after last year's loss on the underlying property rights issue, that position gets harder to justify. The State can only go so long using its authority over the building of fences to keep open a public easement that courts have repeatedly held does not exist. Hence this lawsuit.

As to your point (B)--it's a wonderful thing that private citizens have the financial resources to fight the State and vindicate their legitimate property rights. The opposite of that is tyranny.