Fishermen Found Guilty, Although Court Agrees Subsistence Salmon Fishing Is Religious
Last June, almost 50 fishermen were cited for illegal salmon fishing, reports Angela Denning-Barnes of Alaska Public Media. “The fishermen were challenging the state based on a free exercise clause of the Alaska constitution, arguing that subsistence fishing is a religious practice and that when they fished last summer during closures, they were practicing their religion,” she writes. The judge in the case found that “the state’s need to restrict King salmon supersedes the fishermen’s right to religious practice.”