March 25, 2021 — Did US Supreme Court justice John Roberts throw down the gauntlet for president Joe Biden and invite another lawsuit by the commercial fishing industry earlier this week when he expressed his disdain for past use of the Antiquities Act to block off certain parts of the ocean?
That’s what it looks like to seafood attorney Andrew Minkiewicz, a partner at the firm Kelly Drye, in Washington, D.C.
“This doesn’t happen every day or even in a lifetime,” Minkiewicz said of the apparent opportunity for the industry. “The chief justice really outlined his skepticism of the way presidents are using the power that is, or is not, granted to them in the Antiquities Act. And he raises questions a lot of us have had, like, ‘How did we go from trying to protect ancient dwellings from people robbing their artifacts to now 580,000 square miles of ocean being locked up with the stroke of a pen?”
In his four-page explanation, issued Monday, March 22, for why the high court rejected the petition for certiorari led by the Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association (MLA) and four other fishing groups as part of an effort to allow commercial fishing on nearly 5,000 square miles in the Atlantic Ocean, Roberts practically drew a bull’s eye around the right case to be made next time, Minkiewicz and others believe.
The Pacific Legal Foundation, a libertarian public interest law firm, had argued on behalf of MLA and the other fishing groups that president Barack Obama overstepped his bounds in Sept. 2016 when he used the 1906 antiquities law and proclamation 9496, an executive order, to create the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument. Roberts said the request didn’t meet the standards necessary to warrant a Supreme Court review, but his explanation indicated he strongly agreed with the sentiment.