A Maine Couple Is Suing the State for the Right To Hunt on Sundays

Maine’s new “right-to-food” constitutional modification is the topic of its first lawsuit. The go well with was filed in April by two hunters within the state who argue the modification offers ample foundation to overturn a draconian statewide ban on Sunday looking.

“The Sunday looking ban is outmoded by the Proper to Meals Modification,” wife-and-husband plaintiffs Virginia and Joel Parker argue within the lawsuit, which asks the courtroom to overturn the ban. 

Some householders within the state who permit hunters onto their property oppose the go well with’s objectives. They’re chafing on the prospect of permitting Sunday hunts on their land.

Maine’s right-to-food modification, adopted by voters final November (by a 61 % to 39 % vote), reads as follows:

All people have a pure, inherent and unalienable proper to avoid wasting and trade seeds and the best to develop, elevate, harvest, produce and eat the meals of their very own selecting for their very own nourishment, sustenance, bodily well being and well-being, so long as a person doesn’t commit trespassing, theft, poaching or different abuses of personal property rights, public lands or pure sources within the harvesting, manufacturing or acquisition of meals.

Of their lawsuit, the Parkers level to language within the modification that protects an individual’s “proper to… harvest… meals of their very own selecting for their very own nourishment.”

Maine’s ban on looking on Sundays “is a non secular and social assemble that doesn’t match into any of the Modification’s exceptions, because it can’t be justified by the necessity to defend non-public property rights, public security, or pure sources,” the Parkers’ lawsuit argues. The go well with additionally calls the ban “a historic and non secular anachronism.”

The Parkers are proper. Maine’s Sunday looking ban, on the books since 1883, has nothing to do with property rights, public lands, pure sources, or every other constitutional justification. As a substitute, because the go well with alleges, the ban is proof of Puritan-inspired “blue legal guidelines,” which prohibit having an excessive amount of enjoyable on the day that early Christian colonists in New England held sacred. Although blue legal guidelines have largely been rescinded in Maine and different New England states over time, Maine is stays one in every of simply two states—Massachusetts being the opposite—with legal guidelines in place that prohibit looking on Sundays. 

The lawsuit difficult the ban is a shock in some methods and largely predictable in others. As I defined final yr, nearly everybody aware of the proposed Maine modification agreed its passage would seemingly “spur a bunch of courtroom challenges,” as individuals depend on its imprecise language to advocate for concrete rights. The modification “will probably be outlined over time by judges pressed to decide on which looking and meals laws are too onerous and which of them should not,” the Bangor Every day Information reported final month. 

The actual fact the primary go well with was filed by hunters (reasonably than some agricultural pursuits) is a shock. I would have put cash on both the state’s distinctive meals sovereignty act or foraging legal guidelines—or one thing tied to the state’s huge seafood business—being the topic of the primary lawsuit filed in search of safety below the brand new modification.

One other space that is more likely to see its share of right-to-food-amendment lawsuits pertains to genetically modified seeds. As I detailed in 2016, when the Maine modification was first proposed, language in it making a proper to avoid wasting and trade seeds is very problematic.

“The problem with saving seeds arises when a farmer voluntarily indicators a contract that claims he will not [save or exchange seeds], as many seed contracts supplied by GMO producers do,” I defined. “The seed language due to this fact would make it tough for Mainers to do enterprise with GMO seed producers. And which will have been the purpose of the controversial language.”

Whereas lawsuits over GMO seeds will come—and I hope they in the end trigger the seed-related language of the constitutional modification to be struck down, whereas the remainder of the modification is upheld—different fits appear extra more likely to search to guard and broaden meals freedom within the state, simply because the Parkers’ go well with does.

Over the previous 100 years, Maine lawmakers have made dozens of unsuccessful makes an attempt to rescind the state’s ban on Sunday looking. The Parkers’ lawsuit may accomplish what generations of legislative efforts have didn’t do. In that manner, this lawsuit demonstrates how Maine’s right-to-food modification is already displaying its potential to function a robust new software to guard and broaden meals freedom.