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Judge Dismisses PETA Lawsuit Targeting Maine Lobster Festival
A Maine judge has tossed out a lawsuit from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals that aimed to shut down one of the state’s most famous seafood traditions, the Maine Lobster Festival in Rockland.
The lawsuit, filed last summer just days before the festival opened, argued that steaming live lobsters on public land amounted to animal abuse and created a public nuisance. PETA claimed its local members were forced to avoid the festival altogether to spare themselves the “trauma” of seeing lobsters cooked for the crowd.
Justice Patrick Larson was not persuaded.
In a ruling issued Jan. 26, Larson dismissed the case, finding that PETA failed to show the kind of specific injury required to establish a public nuisance under Maine law. Because of that failure, the court did not even need to decide whether steaming lobsters is objectionable in the first place.
Larson also made a point that will likely resonate well beyond Rockland. A PETA member, the judge ruled, has no legal right to be shielded from conduct they personally find offensive.
PETA, which sued both the city of Rockland and the festival itself, argued that allowing the event to operate on public waterfront property made the city complicit in alleged animal cruelty. The group also claimed the festival interfered with public access to Harbor Park.
Festival officials have consistently rejected those claims, noting that admission is free and that protesters are welcome in Rockland, just not on festival grounds during the event.
Despite the loss in court, PETA insists the case is far from over.
“Lobsters’ lives shouldn’t be dismissed any more than PETA’s lawsuit should be, and the case is a historic one,” said PETA Foundation General Counsel Asher Smith in a statement published by the organization. “It comes at a time when the City must honestly acknowledge that other sentient forms of life may not look exactly like Maine residents, but they feel pain and are having it cruelly inflicted on them.”
PETA also pointed to the United Kingdom’s plans to ban boiling live lobsters as evidence that the tide is turning, and says it intends to pursue additional legal action.
This is not PETA’s first run at Maine’s lobster industry. In 2013, the group filed a complaint targeting a Rockland lobster processing plant, only to be told by then-District Attorney Geoffrey Rushlau that Maine’s animal cruelty laws were never intended to apply to invertebrates like lobsters and crabs.
More than a decade later, that interpretation appears unchanged.
For now, the Maine Lobster Festival remains exactly what it has always been, a celebration of a working waterfront, a commercial fishery, and a meal that has fed generations of coastal families. PETA, meanwhile, is once again left promising appeals, empathy kits, and a future where lobsters are kept out of the pot, whether Mainers like it or not.
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