PORTLAND, Maine (Legal Newsline) - The tourist destination Bar Harbor, Maine, can restrict cruise ship passengers from entering the town in order to keep locals happy.
U.S. District Judge Lance Walker made that ruling on Feb. 29 in the court challenge of the ordinance filed by business groups hoping to keep passengers - and their money - on Bar Harbor's streets.
Walker wrote the case presented the question of whether a municipality that owns its port facilities can restrain interstate cruise ship commerce for local welfare. He rejected arguments like the ordinance is preempted by federal maritime law ensuring shore access for seafarers.
"Ultimately, the costs and benefits of the various features of cruise tourism and the 1000-person daily passenger cap do not boil down to a neat finding of arbitrariness, irrationality, irrelevance, or discrimination," Walker wrote.
"A rational voter could take these features into consideration and conclude that a 1,000-passenger cap is an appropriate means of recalibrating the Town’s approach to this very local concern."
Walker addressed Commerce Clause concerns by ruling Bar Harbor's cap will undermine the cruise industry.
"If anything, permitting municipalities to establish terms and conditions on local participation in cruise tourism may encourage more municipalities to consider participation, knowing that they will not thereby be compelled to accommodate whatever level of traffic the cruise lines and their local partners wish to impose," he wrote.
"That more ports may be open to smaller vessels is to be expected rather than condemned on 'constitutional' grounds."
The plaintiffs claim in their class action that Bar Harbor's Special Use Ordinance Amendment passed in November of 2022, which limits the number of persons allowed to disembark from cruise ships, is unconstitutional.
Specifically, they allege the ordinance's 1,000-person disembarkation limit, including passengers and crew, is a "comprehensive federal regulatory scheme" that "impermissibly" bars cruise ships and maritime facilities from their operations in the Port of Bar Harbor.
They also allege the ordinance prevents them from engaging in their federally approved operations. The plaintiffs claim the ordinance will also have impacts outside Bar Harbor and Maine and cause a disruption to cruise ship commerce across the Eastern Seaboard.
They can appeal Walker's ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.