The purpose of this article is to highlight some of the roles government can take on that exist outside the traditional regulatory powers of government. Two such nonregulatory roles include the rights of government as the property owner of submerged lands, and the rights/ obligations of government as trustee of the public trust under the public trust doctrine that exists at common law and also statutorily in many coastal states. The reasons these nonregulatory roles are important considerations is because of the reasonable argument that a government that is not acting in a regulatory capacity cannot be said to be “regulating,” and therefore cannot be subject to a regulatory takings claim. As such, it may be helpful to practitioners working with public coastal planning authorities to consider the importance of thinking about government’s nonregulatory rights in the coastal zone as a means of developing policy responses to sea-level rise that impact private property right expectations.