A case challenging a Sunday hunting ban will help define the scope of a new constitutional amendment.
Maine has the only state constitution that protects the right to food. The provision, acclaimed as a breakthrough by human rights advocates, was added by statewide referendum in November 2021. In October, Maine’s highest court is expected to hear arguments in Parker v. Department of Inland Fisheries & Wildlife, a challenge to the state’s ban on Sunday hunting that will give the high court its first opportunity to begin to define the scope of this amendment.
Many states have constitutional rights to hunt and fish, as well as statutory provisions honoring traditional indigenous hunting and fishing practices. Minnesotans have a constitutional right to sell farm or garden produce without a license. But Maine’s constitutional provision is potentially broader, with open-ended language incorporating natural law and suggesting the possibility of a government obligation to provide food. Some commentators have described its scope as “mysterious.”
The amendment states:
“All individuals have a natural, inherent and unalienable right to food, including the right to save and exchange seeds and the right to grow, raise, harvest, produce and consume the food of their own choosing for their own nourishment, sustenance, bodily health and well‐being, as long as an individual does not commit trespassing, theft, poaching or other abuses of private property rights, public lands or natural resources in the harvesting, production or acquisition of food.”
Advocates in several states, including Washington and West Virginia, are mounting their own right-to-food campaigns and waiting to see how Maine’s provision is interpreted. Meanwhile, in Parker, the supreme judicial court will begin the process of discerning how broad Maine’s amendment really is.
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