Saving Seafood

Despite commercial fishers’ US Supreme Court victory, district court upholds at-sea observers rule

July 22, 2o25 — A U.S. District Court has upheld a rule requiring commercial fishers to pay for at-sea monitors, despite the case playing a role in the U.S. Supreme Court overturning the Chevron deference last year.

The Chevron deference is a longstanding judicial precedent that instructed courts to give federal agencies wide latitude in interpreting the laws passed by Congress. While the Supreme Court ruled in favor of two separate lawsuits brought by commercial fishermen in overturning the Chevron deference, the lower U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island has determined that the fishing regulation at the heart of one of those cases will remain in place.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Justice Department in Talks to Settle Loper Bright

July 21, 2025 — Sometimes, a little sunlight does some good. As I reported last month, even while Pam Bondi’s Justice Department has been treating Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo as a victory for conservative and MAGA critics of the administrative state, career lawyers at the DOJ were continuing to defend the very Commerce Department fishing-monitor regulation at issue in Loper Bright and its companion case, Relentless, Inc. v. Department of Commerce. On Tuesday, a federal judge ruled in favor of the government in Relentless, concluding that the Commerce Department could saddle fishing boats with the cost of monitors even without any authorization in the statutory text for charging them such a fee: “The default norm, manifest without express statement in literally hundreds of regulations, is that the government does not reimburse regulated entities for the cost of complying with properly enacted regulations, at least short of a taking.” Never mind that this isn’t a matter of the boats bearing the costs of their own compliance with rules, but of paying a regulatory agent for the government. The judge also found that, because the Magnuson-Stevens Act gives the agency “necessary and appropriate” powers, this “in no uncertain terms, delegates . . . a large degree of discretionary authority.” Actually, a term could hardly be more uncertain, and the whole point of Loper Bright is that agency discretion is about policy — not the interpretation of the law.

Read the full article at the National Review

Court upholds rule requiring fishing boat owners to pay regulators

July 18, 2025 — A federal court has upheld the government’s ability to require commercial fishing boat owners to pay for monitors aboard their vessels, a year after the Supreme Court took up the case and broadly curbed federal agencies’ authority.

The U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island ruled Tuesday that a NOAA Fisheries rule was lawful under the primary U.S. fisheries law, the Magnuson-Stevens Act (MSA).

Senior Judge William Smith said the court must exercise its independent judgment on whether an agency acted within its authority.

Read the full article at E&E News

Fishermen’s Case That Overturned Chevron Sees Agency Rule Upheld

July 17, 2025 — Atlantic herring fishermen failed to overturn a National Marine Fisheries Service rule requiring vessels to pay onboard compliance monitors’ costs in a case that joined Loper Bright v. Raimondo in rolling back agency deference at the US Supreme Court.

The US District Court for the District of Rhode Island upheld the agency’s interpretation of the Magnuson-Stevens Fisheries Act’s vessel observer requirements on Tuesday, offering an early indication of how much courts may exercise independent judgment in determining if the government conducted “reasoned decisionmaking.”

“Congress explicitly delegated discretionary authority,” to the NMFS to issue rules that the agency deems “necessary and appropriate for the conservation and management of the fishery,” and Judge William E. Smith ruled industry-funded monitoring fits within those parameters.

The Supreme Court included a discretionary delegation caveat in the Loper Bright decision last June, which overturned the longstanding Chevron doctrine requiring courts to defer to an agency’s reasonable interpretation of an ambiguous statute. The cases were remanded to their respective appeals courts, and the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit sent this case back to district court.

Read the full article at Bloomberg Law

Court open to upholding US fishing monitor rule even without ‘Chevron’ doctrine

November 5, 2024 — A U.S. appeals court on Monday appeared open to upholding a federal rule requiring commercial fishermen to fund a program to monitor for overfishing of herring off New England’s coast even after the U.S. Supreme Court in that same case issued a landmark ruling curbing agencies’ regulatory power.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, during oral arguments, weighed the impact of the U.S. Supreme Court’s June decision to scrap a 40-year-old legal doctrine that had required courts to defer to agencies’ interpretations of ambiguous laws they administer.

The 6-3 conservative majority U.S. Supreme Court nixed the doctrine, known as “Chevron deference,” after taking up an appeal by several commercial fishing companies of the D.C. Circuit panel’s 2-1 ruling in August 2022 that had relied on the doctrine to uphold the fishing rule.

The justices sent the case back to the D.C. Circuit to reassess the rule’s validity post-Chevron using their own judgment and for further arguments by the fishing companies, led by New Jersey-based Loper Bright Enterprises.

Read the full article at Reuters

How the Supreme Court rescued my NJ fishing firm that bureaucrats almost sank

July 2, 2024 — Wayne Reichle is president and owner of Lund’s Fisheries in Cape May, New Jersey. He was one of the small business owners who sued the federal government in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, which resulted in the Supreme Court overturning Chevron deference. Wayne is the third generation in the seafood business. His grandfather was a fishing vessel owner and operator in Cape May, and he was followed by Wayne’s father, Jeff Reichle, who had a vision for expanding the business and helped pioneer several fisheries through his investments in shoreside processing and distribution.

The following excerpt was published by the New York Post:

The Supreme Court just sided with my New Jersey-based, family-owned fishing business — and may have even saved it.

That’s the reality of the court’s June 28 decision in a case called Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, which overturned the “Chevron doctrine” that gave unchecked power to federal bureaucrats.

I was one of the small business owners who sued the federal government in this case.

I didn’t know my lawsuit would go all the way to the Supreme Court, or that the justices would tackle a huge question like bureaucratic accountability and how our laws should be read.

I just wanted to stop a federal agency that threatened my ability to keep my family business afloat.

In early 2020, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration decided that herring boats like mine had to start paying for the federal monitors who sometimes ride along during fishing trips.

These monitors check to make sure we’re not catching more fish than we’re allowed to, and observe our fishing methods to confirm we’re following the rules.

I’m glad we have a federal law that empowered NOAA to create a monitoring program: That law helps keep fishing sustainable.

But nowhere in the law does it say that fishermen like me have to pay for the monitors.

It was long understood that the government should pay for them, since the government requires them.

Only the government can afford them, too: The monitors cost about $700 a day.

For our two fishing boats, this mandate could have forced us to pay for over 100 days of monitoring a year, totaling more than $70,000 — a huge expense for a small fishing business and the fishermen we work with.

What gives federal bureaucrats the right to rewrite federal law?

They say the law is “unclear,” which gives them authority to interpret it.

But common sense says that if the law doesn’t say it, the government can’t do it.

Read the full op-ed at the New York Post

Supreme Court rules for fishermen in landmark ‘Chevron deference’ case

July 1, 2024 — Herring fishermen in New Jersey and Rhode Island who objected to paying fees for fishery observers scored a victory in the U.S Supreme Court Friday that could upend 40 years of federal rulemaking.

The court’s 6-3 decision in the twin cases will have profound effects across U.S. government and industry, setting new limits on how executive branch agencies regulate energy, transportation, food and drugs and other health, safety and environmental rules.

Lawyers with conservative legal activist groups brought the cases, Loper Bright v. Department of Commerce and Relentless v. Department of Commerce, on behalf of fishermen who challenged a National Marine Fisheries Service rule that required them to carry onboard observers to monitor fishing, and pay costs for the observers contracted by NMFS, at up to $700 a day.

The cases hinged on the so-called “Chevron deference,” a landmark ruling in federal administrative law dating back to a 1984 dispute between the oil giant and environmental activists of the Natural Resources Defense Council. In that earlier Supreme Court decision, justices ruled that the courts should “defer” to executive agencies’ reasonable interpretations of federal statutes.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

US Supreme Court overturns Chevron in blow to NOAA’s regulatory authority

June 28, 2024 — A lawsuit filed by New Jersey herring fishermen has struck a massive blow to the authority of U.S. regulators.

On 28 June, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of the plaintiff fishermen in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, overturning the long-standing Chevron deference – a legal precedent that gave federal agencies wide latitude in interpreting congressional statutes – and limiting the authority of NOAA Fisheries to implement regulations without clear guidance from lawmakers.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

The Supreme Court weakens federal regulators, overturning decades-old Chevron decision

June 28, 2024 — The Supreme Court on Friday upended a 40-year-old decision that made it easier for the federal government to regulate the environment, public health, workplace safety and consumer protections, delivering a far-reaching and potentially lucrative victory to business interests.

The court’s six conservative justices overturned the 1984 decision colloquially known as Chevron, long a target of conservatives who have been motivated as much by weakening the regulatory state as social issues including abortion. The liberal justices were in dissent.

The case was the conservative-dominated court’s clearest and boldest repudiation yet of what critics of regulation call the administrative state.

Bill Bright, a Cape May, New Jersey-based fisherman who was part of the lawsuit, said the decision to overturn Chevron would help fishing businesses make a living. “Nothing is more important than protecting the livelihoods of our families and crews,” Bright said in a statement.

Read the full article at the Associated Press