March 11, 2023 — The U.S. Supreme Court is considering a lawsuit challenging a federal rule requiring commercial fishing boat captains to pay for monitors to observe catches.
The legal challenge before the high court deals with a 2020 federal rule implemented by the National Marine Fisheries Service that requires industry-funded monitoring. The monitors go out on commercial fishing vessels to collect data that’s used to craft new regulations.
A lawsuit, filed by plaintiff Loper Bright Enterprises of New Jersey, argues the new rules will force Atlantic herring fishery fishermen to pay more than $700 per day to contractors, or about 20% of their pay. The program has been delayed until April, amid a shortage of federal funding, but fishermen want it scrapped entirely.
A U.S. District Court judge previously rejected the lawsuit, which was upheld by a divided federal Appeals Court, but the fishing groups filed a petition to the Supreme Court, which agreed to take up the case.