Opinion ID: 2190751
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Heading: Legislative and Judicial History

Text: It has long been understood that by virtue of the Colonial Ordinance of 1641 the title to land between the flux and reflux of the tide is held by the owner of the upland subject to the right of the public to use it for purposes of navigation and fishing. Moulton v. Libbey, 37 Me. 472 (1854); Marshall v. Walker, 93 Me. 532, 45 A. 497 (1900); Blaney v. Rittall, Me., 312 A.2d 522 (1973). Our Court has consistently taken the position that the title to the shellfish in these tidal waters is in the State as representative of the people, exercising not only rights of sovereignty but also property. Moulton v. Libbey, supra; State v. Leavitt, 105 Me. 76, 72 A. 875 (1909); see also Comm. v. Hilton, 174 Mass. 29, 54 N.E. 362 (1889). In this capacity of trustee for the people, the State has the power to regulate and control its shellfisheries. State v. Peabody, 103 Me. 327, 69 A. 273 (1907); State v. Leavitt, supra. This was also the rationale as to a state's wildlife followed by the United States Supreme Court in McCready v. Virginia, 94 U.S. 391, 394, 24 L.Ed. 248 (1876) and reiterated in Geer v. Connecticut, 161 U.S. 519, 16 S.Ct. 600, 40 L.Ed. 793 (1896). From the time of the Colonial Ordinance of 1641 it was the policy of Massachusetts and, since our statehood, of Maine to consider the inhabitants of towns with clam flats as entitled to preferential treatment in their enjoyment and responsibility in their management. State v. Leavitt, supra; Commonwealth v. Hilton, supra. The Ordinance itself declared that `every inhabitant that is a householder shall have free fishing and fowling in any great ponds, bays, coves and rivers, so far as the sea ebbs and flows within the precincts of the town where they dwell, unless the freemen of the same town or the general court have otherwise appropriated them.' 105 Me. at 80, 72 A. at 877. Our first Legislature placed the regulation of local clam harvesting in the respective municipal officers but included an assurance that inhabitants of the community may take shellfish at any times for their personal and family use. P.L.1821, Vol. II, ch. 179, § 3 prohibited the taking of clams except [t]hat every inhabitant of each of the said towns without such permit shall have a right to take such other shell fish from their beds therein for the use of his or her family . . . . This pattern of legislative reliance upon a town's interest in a local resource to assure proper seasonal and quantitative harvesting combined with preferential right for a town's residents as against nonresidents was repeated, in slightly varying language throughout the state's history. In 1903 the controlling statute read: Any town may at its annual meeting fix the times in which clams may be taken within its limits, and the prices for which its municipal officers shall grant permits therefor; and unless so regulated by vote, residents of the town may take clams without written permit. But without permit any inhabitant within his own town, or transient person therein, may take clams for the consumption of himself and family. This section does not apply to hotel keepers taking clams for the use of their hotels, . . . . P.L.1901, ch. 284, § 37. In 1906 the enabling statute (R.S.1903, ch. 41, § 34) was the same in all pertinent respects. The town of Lamoine (purporting to act under the 1901 statute) and the town of Cushing (relying on the 1906 law) each enacted ordinances which effectively barred nonresidents from all digging on their respective flats. Each prosecuted a nonresident for violation of the ordinance and each nonresident defendant claimed the ordinance denied him equal protection. In each case this Court held that the enabling statutes were not broad enough to authorize a complete exclusion of nonresident diggers and did not reach the constitutional issue. State v. Bunker, 98 Me. 387, 57 A. 95 (1903); State v. Peabody, supra. However, the equal protection issue rose again soon. The Legislature had accorded residents of the town of Scarboro unique statutory privileges by special legislation which closed the flats of Scarboro to all digging between April 1 and October 1 except by residents taking for their family use and local hotel keepers taking for hotel use. In State v. Leavitt, supra, a nonresident, non-hotel-keeping defendant who was convicted under the ordinance claimed on appeal that it denied him equal protection. The Court reaffirmed the concept of the State's representation of its citizens in their ownership of the shellfish in the flats between high and low tides and the responsibility and power of the Legislature to regulate and control these fisheries for the benefit of all the people of the State. Moulton v. Libbey, supra. The Court was satisfied that circumstances might well require diversified treatment of different shellfish areas and that the Legislature could reasonably conclude that some limitation upon the quantity of clams to be taken in Scarboro was necessary (perhaps in part because of its proximity to large centers of human population) in order to avoid the destruction of the clam fishery there. The Court felt that, while this goal might be attempted by closing the flats to all fishing for a period, this method seemed impracticable and was presumably rejected by the Legislature which chose, instead, to limit the number of persons fishinga reasonable choice, the Court felt, in view of the fact that [i]t is evident that all the inhabitants of the state cannot take clams in Scarboro without limit. The Leavitt Court concluded that the State's interest in the clam population was an alienable property right and that the State, in the exercise of its power of regulation, may grant inequality of treatment of its citizens if for a proper governmental purpose and if the difference bears a just and proper relation to the attempted classification. The Court said: Since it must be assumed that the public interest required some limitation upon the right of clam fishing, it does not seem to us that it is unreasonable or arbitrary for the state having a proprietary interest as well as a governmental power all for the public benefit to give the preference to those whom the law for more than two hundred and fifty years has given a preference, and who were enjoying a preference when the fourteenth amendment was adopted, namely the inhabitants of the town within which the fisheries are located. The discrimination between them and the inhabitants of other towns seems to us to `bear a just and proper relation' to the difference in situation, in locality, and in the actual enjoyment of prior legal rights or privileges. It is not unreasonable that they to whose doors nature has brought these `succulent bivalves' shall be entitled to them before those who are less favorably situated whenever there must be restriction. And we do not think that the legislative recognition of this existing superiority in situation and privilege denies to others the equal protection of the law. 105 Me. at 85, 86, 72 A. at 879. Apparently assured of the validity of its philosophy, the Maine Legislature continued to enact shellfish regulation statutes which gave residents preferred digging privileges over those given nonresidents, and it was more than 40 years before the equal protection issue arose again in connection with digging in the littoral. It arose from prosecution under a statute (R.S.1944, ch. 34, § 77) which prohibited the taking of bloodworms in the town of Woolwich without a license from municipal officers and which specifically provided that nonresidents were not eligible for such a license. The Court held that the constitutional power of the Legislature to authorize towns to exclude nonresidents from the local flats had been settled by Leavitt. (It was actually the statute itself which barred that nonresident and not the ordinance.) State v. Lemar, 147 Me. 405, 87 A.2d 886 (1952). Following this, many Legislatures (presumably familiar with the holdings of Leavitt and Lemar ) apparently concluded that in many instances the protection of the clam populations and the traditional local interest in them justified a complete barring by the Legislature itself of digging by nonresidents (or nonresidents who did not pay local real estate taxes) in certain areas. In 1944 the Legislature, by Private and Special Legislation and sometimes by public law, directly gave these exclusive rights to inhabitants of ten towns, in 1947 to inhabitants of eleven, and in 1949 to inhabitants of fifteen. A typical one of these acts was P. & S.L.1949, ch. 59 which made it unlawful for a nonresident not paying a local real estate tax to dig clams in the town of North Haven. [2] The 1959 revision of our Sea and Shore Fisheries laws authorized municipalities to license local cultivation of clams and made towns with clam harvesting ordinances responsible for their enforcement. P.L.1959, ch. 331, §§ 46-62. The same Legislature also revised the Private and Special Laws concerning clam digging in certain towns, continuing the policy of barring nonresidents in certain areas or permitting the towns to do so by ordinance. P. & S.L. of 1959, chs. 154, 155. Finally, in 1963 the lawmakers took the latest step in reordering the responsibility for preservation of the clamming industry when it enacted P.L.1963, ch. 277, entitled An Act Repealing the Town Clam Laws and Authorizing Special Privileges for Cooperating Towns. This Act amended the 1959 revision in these respects (concerning clams): (1) It authorized municipalities to raise money for a shellfish conservation program. (2) It limited the right of municipalities to enact ordinances to regulate and license clammingenjoyed by towns since 1822to those towns which had raised or appropriated money within 2 years next prior to acting under this section for a shellfish conservation program . . . . (3) It added a specific authorization to the municipalities to determine the qualifications for the license, including residence requirementsthe language with which we are now particularly concerned. (4) It repealed the portions of Private and Special Laws of 1959, chs. 154 and 155 which had specifically excluded nonresident digging or had granted special privileges to residents.