Opinion ID: 2190751
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Interpretation of the Enabling Act

Text: The Defendants insist that the statutory authorization to the municipalities to determine the qualifications for the license, including residence requirements falls short of showing a clear intention to delegate to the towns the right to exclude nonresidents from local clam flats (even if, in fact, the State possesses such power to do so, which the Defendants deny). Because the statute carries penalties for persons convicted of violation of ordinances enacted under it, it must receive a strict construction. State v. Wallace, 102 Me. 229, 66 A. 476 (1906). In Alley we examined the identical statute but the attack was confined to its constitutionality and that of the ordinance and the Alley ordinance restricted but did not entirely prohibit nonresident digging. Now, in spite of the absence of express and positive authorization to towns to exclude nonresidents completely, our review of the deep background against which the 1963 Legislature acted [3] leaves us convinced that the words Qualifications for the license, including residency requirements were intended to leave to the municipalities the determination of whether nonresidents should be permitted to dig in local flats at all and, if so, under what conditions. Ever since 1822 statutes had given municipalities the power to enact ordinances to fix the times in which clams may be taken and the prices and number to be issued within their territorial limits, and these statutes granted residents of the respective municipalities varied privileges to take clams without licenses at times when nonresidents could not shellfish. In Bunker and Peabody our Court found that this right to license and regulate the times for taking fell short of authorizing the exclusion of nonresidents. The Legislature itself then specifically barred certain seasonal digging by nonresidents in Scarboro, and the Court in Leavitt upheld the constitutionality of the Act. During the following half century and more, the Legislature followed up the successful accomplishment of its purpose in Scarboro by enacting dozens of Private and Special Laws (and some Public Laws) which either directly limited or barred digging altogether by nonresidents or authorized towns to do so by ordinance. The revision of the Sea and Shore Fisheries laws in 1959 (P.L.1959, ch. 331, §§ 46-50) dropped the general grant of special privileges to residents but the Legislature's determination to favor local residents, in many instances to the complete exclusion of nonresidents, was concentrated in the enactment of Private and Special Laws, chs. 154 and 155 which contained some 73 sections regulating (or authorizing regulation of) clamming in some 73 individual municipalities to the advantage of the residents and the disadvantage of nonresidents. Finally, in 1963, when the Legislature repealed the many separate Acts granting or authorizing special privileges for residents in individual towns and at the same time added by amendment (to the municipalities' powers to regulate and license) the words and may determine the qualifications for the license, including residence requirements, the Legislature, we are certain, intended to turn over to the municipalities from biennium to biennium the entire question whether their nonresident fellow citizens should be permitted to dig in local flats, and if so, under what conditions. [4] The ordinance purported to exercise powers which the enabling Act purported to delegate. But could the Legislature constitutionally delegate authority to discriminate at will between residents and nonresidents? Inasmuch as we believe that the overriding purpose of the Legislature was that of conservation, we do not believe the Legislature intended that this authority should be unqualified. Indeed, it could hardly do so, constitutionally, and the Legislature is presumed to have intended to act within constitutional limitations. We read into the statute a legislative intention that municipalities may exclude nonresidents from their clam flats only when, and to the extent, it is reasonably necessary for the proper conservation of this valuable resource.