Lawsuit links new Maine right to Sunday hunting

AUGUSTA, Maine — Most Maine voters most likely didn’t notice it once they marked their ballots final November, however they may have set the stage for individuals to hunt on Sundays.

Voters within the November 2021 election authorised the “proper to meals” modification to the Maine structure. It says all people have a pure, inherent and unalienable proper to develop, increase, harvest, produce and devour the meals of their very own selecting for their very own nourishment, sustenance, bodily well being and well-being.

On Wednesday, that new constitutional proper grew to become the centerpiece of a lawsuit to permit Maine individuals to hunt on Sundays.

 “Mainers deserve the suitable to hunt and harvest the meals of their selecting seven days per week throughout established searching seasons,” mentioned Hared Bornstein, director of Maine Hunters United for Sunday Looking.

The group filed a lawsuit in Superior Court docket in Augusta, hoping to drive the Division of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife to finish the greater than 120-year prohibition on Sunday searching. They filed the go well with in opposition to the Division of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife.

Looking will not be particularly talked about in the suitable to meals modification, however Bornstein says the phrase “harvest” within the modification clearly covers searching in addition to crops and livestock.

“The Sunday searching ban is outmoded by the Proper to Meals Modification,” the lawsuit states, then provides, “The ban 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 Division of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife selected to not touch upon the go well with, and neither did the Sportsmen’s Alliance of Maine, the state’s largest searching group.

Jared Bornstein mentioned many hunters discover it tough to make time for the hunt as they cope with work and household commitments, and that permitting Sunday searching would assist them feed their households.

“Harvesting deer meat generally is a recreation, however for almost all of Mainers who select to hunt it’s a religious, ancestral and financial necessity that they’re afforded essentially the most alternative to achieve success of their harvest.”

Virginia Parker of Readfield, the plaintiff named within the precise lawsuit criticism, mentioned that’s the case for her household, and why she needs to see searching allowed on Sundays.

“We’d have extra alternative to feed our household an natural pure and god-given reward of wildlife, wild recreation,” Parker mentioned.

The lawsuit will now proceed by the courtroom, which usually can take months. The lawyer who filed the go well with mentioned he hopes Maine’s Lawyer Basic will agree that the ban on Sunday searching now violates the constitutional defend for proper to meals, and be prepared to start out the method to vary that regulation, with out ready for the courtroom to rule.

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