(The Center Square) — Maine’s highest court is considering a lawsuit challenging the state’s 140-year-old ban on Sunday hunting following its rejection by a lower state court.
On Wednesday, both sides of the legal challenge made their cases before the Maine Supreme Judicial Court about whether a constitutional amendment approved by voters in 2021 granting a right to food means that Mainers should be able to go hunting any day of the week.
A lawyer for the plaintiffs in the lawsuit argued that the restrictions violate the state’s new voter-approved “Right to Food” constitutional amendment and asked the judge to repeal the law. The constitutional amendment declares Mainers have an “unalienable right to grow, raise, harvest, produce and consume the food of their own choosing.”
“The right to food amendment, as approved by the voters of Maine, protects the right to hunt for food,” Attorney Pamela Lee, who represents the plaintiffs, told justices. “The text of this amendment is not ambiguous — it uses general language that is not meant to distinguish between different types or sources of food.”
But a lawyer representing the Maine Department of Fisheries and Wildlife argued that the constitutional amendment didn’t apply to hunting and that lawmakers would have included it in the law if they had intended.
“The wildlife of Maine is not owned by any individual in the state,” Assistant Attorney General Paul Suitter told justices. “It is the property of the people of Maine as sovereign. We the people get to determine how our property may be hunted and we do that from our elected Legislature.”
Much of the legal wrangling in the case deals with the term “harvesting” food in the constitutional amendment, which plaintiffs argued includes hunting. But lawyers for the state told justices that the law didn’t include the term “hunting” in the final wording of the law.
Maine is one of a handful of states where hunting is completely banned on Sundays, including Massachusetts, according to the National Rifle Association. Another five states restrict Sunday hunting. The restrictions are the product of Puritan-era “blue” laws, such as a ban on the sale of alcohol on Sundays, most of which have been repealed.
The Sunday Hunting Coalition — which includes the NRA, National Shooting Sports Association and retailers, including Bass Pro Shops — has been lobbying for years to repeal Sunday hunting bans in states that still have them. But they’ve had few victories.
Maine’s sportsmen spend more than $609 million a year, supporting more than 10,387 jobs and generating $71 million in state and local taxes, according to the Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation. Lifting the Sunday hunting ban would add to the economic activity, the foundation said.
Opponents of lifting the restrictions argue that hunting is allowed every other day, and hikers and bird watchers should be granted at least one day to enjoy the woods without worrying about getting shot or stumbling across a group of armed men dressing a deer carcass.
Campaigns to repeal the ban have been persistent but short-lived in Maine, where lawmakers rejected a legislative proposal to lift the restrictions two years ago.
Last year, the Democratic-controlled Legislature rejected a stand-alone bill that would have repealed the Sunday hunting restrictions.
