CALAIS, Me.—Kamiwan and Paul Oliver’s flock of chickens provides them with eggs and meat to feed their family. Kamiwan and Paul also keep a vegetable garden together, and Kamiwan cans food and bakes bread. But that independence is threatened by a town ordinance that makes it impossible for the Olivers—and most residents—to keep chickens in their yards.
But Maine isn’t like anywhere else in the United States. The state enshrined its spirit of self-reliance in a Right to Food amendment passed into the state constitution in 2021. Believing that Calais’ overly restrictive rules violate their constitutional right, the Olivers are teaming up with the Institute for Justice (IJ) to sue the town for the right to keep their chickens.
“Mainers’ Right to Food doesn’t mean much if towns can make it impossible to do something as simple as keeping chickens,” said IJ Attorney Nick DeBenedetto. “We will protect the Olivers’ right to provide for their family and to preserve the rights of everyone in Maine to feed themselves.”
The Right to Food Amendment, the first-of-its-kind in the U.S., says Mainers have a “natural, inherent and unalienable right to . . . grow, raise, harvest, produce and consume the food of their own choosing for their own nourishment, sustenance, bodily health and well-being.” Whether cities can regulate this right into irrelevance is a question that has yet to be tested in Maine courts.
Calais’ rules only permit coops on half acre lots, require the coop to be at least 20 feet from a neighbor’s property, bans the use of recycled materials in coop construction, and limits the number of chickens to six. This means that few residents of Calais have either the ability or the resources to keep chickens as a meaningful food source. The 19 chickens in the Olivers’ coop provide them with about a dozen eggs a day—enough to feed their family and occasionally share with their neighbors.
“Our chickens are a key part of how we feed our family and this ordinance punishes us for trying to be self-sufficient,” said Kamiwan. “We as a people have become desensitized to anemic eggs and broken bones on slimy Styrofoam—separated from the circle of life which once connected us to the Earth. Calais is attempting to stand in the way of those who choose to reclaim a small fraction of that circle.”
Because the Right to Food Amendment is the first in the nation and still relatively new in Maine, there have been few court decisions regarding the limits government can place on the right. For instance, an earlier ruling by the Maine Supreme Judicial Court affirmed that the right to hunt was protected “harvesting” activity—but that a ban on Sunday hunting was constitutional. While a recent state law prevents cities from banning chicken coops outright, whether they can stifle chicken keeping with regulations is an open question.
“Americans value their ability to be self-reliant—from running a business, to educating their family, to growing their own food,” said IJ Attorney Rob Peccola. “Maine provides special constitutional protections for people who raise food on their property—protections that go further than anywhere else in the country. But the challenges Mainers face aren’t unique. Across the United States, zoning laws and permitting regimes are making self-sufficiency harder and harder. Americans are being told they need permission to feed themselves. It’s time to push back.”
The Institute for Justice defends property owners nationwide through its Zoning Justice and Food Freedom Projects. In North Carolina, IJ is defending residential property owners who operate an animal rescue charity. In Idaho, IJ is representing the owner of a tiny home on wheels fighting a city ban. And in Wisconsin, IJ successfully stopped government efforts to prohibit home baking.