Gulls surround the lobster boat Cora Pearl as it departs a berth at Custom House Wharf in Portland in May 2023. Ben McCanna/Staff Photographer

A federal judge dismissed a lawsuit by five Maine lobstermen who say that the state’s rule requiring tracking devices on their boats violates their rights against unreasonable search and seizure.

Although the judge dismissed the suit against the commissioner of the Maine Department of Marine Resources, he encouraged the lobstermen to appeal the decision because it raises “significant Fourth Amendment issues.” The Fourth Amendment protects against unreasonable searches and seizures by the government.

In his ruling, U.S. District Judge John Woodcock cited jurisdictional problems with the case. While he agreed that the department’s rules of installing tracking devices are clear, are informational and have a “properly defined scope,” he also wrote that the lobstermen have “legitimate privacy concerns.”

“Lobstermen are not always fishing on their boats,” Woodcock wrote in the ruling. “They have their own lives. Even though they use their boats to fish for lobsters, they also use these vessels to perform personal errands, to visit family and friends, and even in some cases to live on.”

But because the lobster industry has many regulations, the state has legal authority to inspect boats for compliance without a search warrant, even through tracking devices, Woodcock wrote.

Although the lobstermen are concerned about privacy with the data collected from their tracking devices, Woodcock agreed that because they work in a “closely regulated industry” that this data is important for lobster preservation.

Alfred Frawley, a Portland lawyer who represents the lobstermen, said in an interview Friday that his clients will appeal the judge’s decision and will base their appeal on the Fourth Amendment, he said.

The issue is “relatively new,” Frawley said. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans in February 2023 struck down part of a rule by the National Marine Fisheries Service requiring owners and operators of charter boats in the Gulf of Mexico to use approved GPS tracking devices to transmit the boat’s position to the NMFS and U.S. Coast Guard. The court did not decide whether the rule violated Fourth Amendment rights.

The 5th Circuit instead rejected the government’s arguments, ruling that GPS tracking devices do not fall within the scope of equipment that a 1976 federal fishery conservation and management law can require on recreational vessels. The NMFS rule exceeded the law’s authority, the court ruled.

Frawley said the Maine lobsterman’s case will be the first to be argued on constitutional grounds.