PORTLAND, Maine (Legal Newsline) - A “right to food” enshrined in the Maine Constitution includes the right to hunt but not on Sunday, the state’s highest court ruled, upholding a ban on Sabbath activities dating back to the 1800s.
Maine legislators approved an amendment in 2021 establishing “an inalienable right to food,” including growing and harvesting produce as long as it doesn’t involve “theft, poaching or other abuses of private property rights, public lands or natural resources.” Another law with roots in an 1840 statute prohibiting a long list of activities “on the Lord’s Day,” bans hunting on Sunday.
Virginia and Joel Parker sued the Maine Inland Fisheries and Wildlife Dept. in 2022 after they were refused a permit to hunt on Sunday, arguing the right-to-food amendment rendered the Sunday ban unconstitutional. They said school and work obligations limited them to hunting for food on the weekends. Their case drew the attention of forest property owners, who argued a victory for the Parkers would actually reduce the land available for hunting on private land.
A trial court dismissed the Parkers’ case for failure to state a claim. That was error, Maine’s Supreme Judicial Court ruled, although the amendment’s exception for “poaching” meant the Parkers still can’t hunt on Sunday.
“The right to hunt for food created by the amendment does not extend to illegal hunting,” the court ruled in a March 28 decision by Justice Andrew M. Mead.
The Sunday hunting ban has been on the books in various forms since the legislature in 1840 imposed a $10 fine for anyone who engages “in any sport, game or recreation” on Sunday. An explicit hunting ban was passed in 1883 and the current version of the law was passed in 2003.
The Parkers had a legitimate claim because the word “harvest” in the right-to-food amendment “unambiguously enshrines a right to hunt for the limited purposes of `nourishment, sustenance, bodily health and well-being,” the Supreme Court ruled. But the amendment also contains an exception for poaching. While the word “poaching” doesn’t have a precise meaning under Maine law, its use implicitly grants the legislature authority to decide when hunting is illegal, the court said.
“The right to hunt for food created by the amendment does not extend to illegal hunting, and therefore Maine’s longstanding Sunday hunting ban does not conflict with the Maine Constitution,” the court concluded.
Borealis Law represented the Parkers, while Preti Flaherty Beliveau & Pachios LLP represented the Maine Woodland Owners, Maine Farm Bureau and the Maine Forest Products Council, who filed briefs in favor of keeping the Sunday hunting ban in place. They argued removing the ban would lead property owners to post “no trespassing” signs on their land, which under Maine law is otherwise available for hunting six days a week.
“If the law stops providing for one day a week when landowners who do not post their land against hunting may enjoy the outdoors without having to encounter or keep an eye out for hunters, landowners who now allow public access on the other six days will start to rethink their decision not to post their land,” the organizations said in a brief.