Setting the record straight!
Cliff Taylor did NOT vote to take away people's hunting
rights.
HERE'S THE TRUTH:
The case cited in the brochure being sent throughout rural Michigan
involved the narrow question of what to do when an ordinance was
passed to ban hunting inside the Saginaw city
limits. In fact, this opinion allows the DNR a process whereby it
can actually designate an area as huntable.
It does not affect hunting rights in rural Michigan!
Other groups have also weighed in on these DISTORTIONS:
- Michigan Farm Bureau:
The brochure "unfairly twisted" the ruling. This ruling "does not affect
hunting in rural Michigan. (MFB article attached)
- Michigan United Conservation
Clubs: A letter from the MUCC Executive
Director to the President of Saginaw Field & Stream stated:
"Please let me assure you that the right to hunt in Michigan is not
being threatened. In fact, the case cited in the brochure has
nothing to do with hunting in rural Michigan. It involved an
anti-hunting ordinance inside the city limits of your local City of Saginaw."
(MUCC letter attached).
There are not many "hunting" or sportsmen cases which come to the
Supreme Court. However, I believe the examples noted below are indicative
of Cliff Taylor's support of the rights of hunters, gun owners, fishermen, and
other sportsmen:
- Michigan United Conservation Clubs v. Secretary of State (2001)
(frequently referred to in Michigan as the concealed weapons
case). Cliff Taylor authored the Supreme Court
opinion that protected the "shall issue" (conceal carry) law was
immune to attack by referendum. He did this by applying the plain
language of the Michigan Constitution.
- Glass v. Goeckel (2005) (the public trust doctrine protects
citizen's rights to walk along the shores of the Great Lakes - up to the high
water mark). In this opinion, the court also said "....walking along the
lakeshore is inherent in the exercise of traditionally protected public
rights of fishing, hunting and navigation...."
- Ionia County Prosecutor v. Gatski (2005). Cliff Taylor
authored a dissent in this case saying that a fisherman should not be
prosecuted under the recreational trespass statute because he was fishing
within the defined banks of the Grand River, and not on Consumers Power
land.
Incidentally, Chief Justice Cliff Taylor is the only state supreme
court justice in the country that earned the endorsement of the NRA. He
was given this endorsement based on his long time commitment to the right
to bear arms and hunt pursuant to Article 1, section 6 of the Michigan
Constitution. I do not believe that the NRA would have broken its
tradition of NOT endorsing in a judicial race if Cliff Taylor had voted to
ban hunting in Michigan. (http://www.nrapvf.org/Elections/State.aspx?y=2008&State=MI).
REMEMBER: ON NOVEMBER 4 VOTE FOR CHIEF JUSTICE CLIFF
TAYLOR ON THE NON-PARTISAN SECTION OF YOUR BALLOT.