A Marin County judge sided with a tech billionaire homeowner and the Bolinas Community Public Utility District, who had sued the state over restrictions on a seawall. In 2020, the California Coastal Commission greenlit Mark Pincus’s plan to rebuild the decaying seawall that protects his oceanfront home and provides public access to a short stretch of Bolinas Beach from the end of Brighton Avenue. But the commissioners, loath to approve any coastal armoring projects on principle, placed a set of requirements on the wall that Mr. Pincus and co-applicant BCPUD saw as prohibitive, including narrowing it by half. Mr. Pincus and the utility sued, and last week, Judge Andrew Sweet made a final ruling in their favor, ordering the commission to vacate its decision and hold a new hearing on the subject within four months. The deciding factor seemed to be comments by two commissioners at a 2020 hearing. Mr. Pincus had orchestrated a polished case for his project, including pre-recorded video comments by locals. Commissioners Sara Aminzadeh and Linda Escalante remarked frankly that they found the campaign inauthentic and expressed concern that Mr. Pincus was trying to “game the process.” In a surprise for the commission, Judge Sweet tentatively agreed last month that Mr. Pincus had been denied a fair hearing, as indicated by what he called the commissioners’ “outrageous” disregard for public comment. Mr. Pincus’s lawyer, Steven Kauffmann, praised the judge’s “well-reasoned decision.”