A federal judge ruled this month that Bar Harbor can only limit the number of passengers coming ashore from cruise ships in July and August.

In other months, the town cannot enforce an ordinance that caps daily disembarkments at 1,000, the ruling said. Voters approved that rule as a referendum in 2022, and local businesses sued the town in response.

“That is not to say that I believe that the residents of Bar Harbor should be required to endure a level of cruise traffic during the shoulder season that ensures they have no respite from the press of the peak summer tourism season,” U.S. District Judge Lance Walker wrote. “Only to say that the 1,000-passenger limitation, applied to every day of every week in the shoulder season is really quite parsimonious from an objective standpoint.”

The development is the latest in a long-running legal battle over cruise ship traffic in Bar Harbor, but it might not be the end of the case.

The Bar Harbor Town Council issued a statement saying it will not accept new advance cruise ship reservations while litigation is ongoing. The council said it will begin working on “a data-backed solution” to manage tourism from cruise ships.

“It is a misreading of this decision to think the Town must return to prior cruise ship levels,” the statement read. “Judge Walker affirmed that it is constitutional for the Town to regulate this, so long as it accounts for the fluctuation in intensity between the shoulder and summer seasons.”

The town manager did not respond to a voicemail Friday.

The plaintiffs include the Association to Preserve and Protect Local Livelihoods, which is a collective of Bar Harbor businesses and citizens, as well as the Penobscot Bay and River Pilot Association, pier owners and touring companies. The law firm that represents that group did not respond to a message Friday.

Walker wrote in his ruling that most cruise ships that previously visited Bar Harbor had a capacity of more than 1,000 passengers, and the ordinance could result in a significant loss of revenue for the plaintiffs.

Charles Sidman, a local resident who spearheaded the referendum in 2022, said in a GoFundMe post seeking donations for legal fees and in a local news op-ed that he plans to keep fighting. He wrote that Walker’s ruling was flawed in part because June, September and October are nearly as busy as the peak summer months. Sidman did not immediately respond to a message via GoFundMe, and his attorney did not return a voicemail on Friday.

“The federal judge in charge of our case just caved to pressure and invented a new reality on which to try to split the baby, in a way that is both outrageous and totally unacceptable to American citizens believing that they should be able to democratically steer their own ship past the wishes and greed of big business,” he wrote on GoFundMe.

Walker initially upheld the ordinance in 2024. The plaintiffs took their case to the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston, which generally agreed with Walker but asked him to review some aspects of the case, including whether the ordinance would be “clearly excessive” in regulating interstate commerce.

Walker’s latest ruling found that the ordinance is excessive in some months but not in others.

“It has been an abiding personal impression, rational in my view, that what may be fair and balanced for the peak season may not be fair and balanced for the shoulder season,” he wrote.

Bar Harbor will see some cruise ships this summer, according to the town website.

The town has a docking agreement with American Cruise Lines, but none of the expected ships has a capacity of more than 130 people.

Two larger ships that carry 3,000 or more will dock in Bar Harbor in August, September and October. The town said those visits were booked prior to 2022 and are grandfathered under previous rules.