December 12, 2025 — U.S. seafood import firms Mark Foods and Bristol Seafood have filed lawsuits over U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariff program, following the lead of fellow seafood companies Netuno USA and Bumble Bee.
New York City, New York, U.S.A.-based Mark Foods and Portland, Maine, U.S.A.-based Bristol Seafood filed separate lawsuits against the U.S. government, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), and CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott in the U.S. Court of International Trade.
December 12, 2025 — The Trump administration is now siding with Alaskan Natives and opposing the state in a long-running fight about subsistence fishing rights and the high-stakes meaning of the phrase “public lands.”
In a legal brief filed Tuesday, Solicitor General D. John Sauer urged the Supreme Court to disregard the state of Alaska’s appeal of a lower court’s decision upholding an expansive view of the Native fishing claims. Sauer’s brief cited the power of precedent, noting previous rejections of efforts to limit the subsistence fishing rights granted under a 1980 federal law.
“Given the length of time this interpretation has been in effect, and Congress’s continuing authority to modify the current framework if it chooses to do so, there is no sound reason for the court to revisit the status quo at this juncture,” the solicitor general’s brief stated.
May 7, 2025 — The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to hear two cases challenging the federal approval of Vineyard Wind. The court denied the petitions Monday.
Commercial fishing interests sued the federal agencies involved in approving the wind farm, which is under construction 15 miles off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket.
The lawsuits were originally filed in 2021 and 2022.
May 6, 2025 — The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday denied petitions from the fishing industry and a conservative think tank challenging the Vineyard Wind project, rejecting their March requests that the country’s highest court hear their cases.
A fishing industry lobbying group, Responsible Offshore Development Alliance (RODA), sued the lead government regulator of offshore wind in early 2022, alleging that by approving Vineyard Wind, the agency had violated several acts, including those protecting existing ocean users and endangered species. The Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF), which represents fishermen and a fishing company in Rhode Island in another lawsuit, had also petitioned the Supreme Court.
RODA had already lost its case in two other courts: first, in 2023 in the U.S. District Court of Massachusetts, where a judge sided with the project and regulators; and second, in 2024 in the First Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, where the judge upheld the lower court’s decision. TPPF also had its case dismissed by the lower courts.
“We are disappointed that the Supreme Court denied our petition,” said Lane Johnston, executive director of RODA, in an email Monday. “This issue is of such importance to members of the commercial fishing industry. RODA will continue our efforts to combat the destructive industrialization of the nation’s marine resources.”
May 5, 2025 — The Supreme Court has declined to reconsider the Biden administration’s approval of a major offshore wind project off the Massachusetts coast, in a reprieve for an industry facing rising political headwinds.
On Monday morning, the justices denied the parallel petitions led by the fishing company Seafreeze Shoreside and the fishing industry trade group Responsible Offshore Development Alliance (RODA) challenging agencies’ approvals for the Vineyard Wind 1 project.
The 62-turbine wind farm is under construction 15 miles off the coast of Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard and is expected to be completed this year. Vineyard Wind’s joint developers Avangrid and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners declined through their attorney to comment on the Supreme Court’s decision.
April 22, 2025 — Advocacy groups opposed to offshore wind development are calling for the Supreme Court to consider how federal approval of a project off the coast of Massachusetts could be violating recent high court decisions curbing agency authority.
The America First Policy Institute and others recently filed “friend of the court” briefs backing a pair of petitions led by the fishing company Seafreeze Shoreside and the fishing industry trade group Responsible Offshore Development Alliance (RODA) seeking to block completion of the Vineyard Wind 1 project.
The briefs are backing the parallel claims before the court: that the Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management overstepped its authority and that lower courts failed to properly review the agency’s decision after a Supreme Court decision limited courts’ deference to agency decision-making.
January 15, 2025 — The U.S. Supreme Court will not hear ACK for Whales‘ case against Vineyard Wind, which claimed the permitting process that allowed the 64-turbine wind farm to be built was flawed.
But the local opposition group isn’t being deterred by the latest legal setback, announcing Monday it is filing new litigation against the Department of the Interior and other federal agencies for the permitting of New England Wind, a separate proposed wind farm project 24 miles southwest of Nantucket.
ACK for Whales board member Veronica Bonnet said it was disappointing the highest court in the land did not hear the case, but that it was a long shot. Only 1% of the roughly 8,000 cases that are petitioned to the Supreme Court each year are chosen to be heard, according to the court’s website.
September 30, 2024 — A group of Nantucket, Massachusetts, residents are appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court in their challenge to the industrialization of parts of the Atlantic Ocean, where they say offshore wind farms – developed with the blessing of the federal government – are putting an endangered whale species at risk.
The group, Nantucket Residents Against Turbines, argues in its petition to the high court that “the federal government has lost sight of its statutory obligations to conserve endangered species that will be directly affected by the construction of thousands of wind turbines in the Atlantic Ocean.”
They argue that the federal agencies that authorized the leasing of the water area to wind turbine companies excluded certain data in their analysis to the benefit of offshore wind development.
“Despite the agencies’ explicit statutory duty to consider all ‘best information available,’ regarding the impacts its actions might have on an endangered or threatened species and those habitats, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), did not consider the cumulative impacts of other planned projects when they authorized and issued permits to construct the Vineyard Wind 1 Project.”
September 19, 2024 — Out-of-pocket payments made by fishermen to federal monitors who accompany them at sea is comparable to the costs fishermen incur when they purchase new gear or equipment to comply with any other other regulations, government lawyers argue in a legal brief filed Wednesday in federal appeals court.
The brief in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Gina Raimondo, is the government’s latest volley in what has become a landmark case pitting NOAA Fisheries against a group of New Jersey herring fishermen after the Supreme Court in June rolled back a long-standing legal doctrine that gave deference to agencies like NOAA in disputes over a regulation’s interpretation.
The filing before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit argues that all NOAA Fisheries regulations require industry compliance and that sometimes compliance “imposes economic costs on vessels.”
September 18, 2024 — Two New Jersey fishermen who convinced the Supreme Court in June to toss out the Chevron doctrine, which had long buttressed federal regulatory muscle are asking an appeals court to effectively get industry-paid NOAA Fisheries monitors off their boats.
In arguments set for Nov. 4, plaintiffs in Loper Bright Enterprises Inc. v. Gina Raimondo will ask the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to make a final ruling on the industry-funded monitoring program that was adopted by NOAA in 2020 and ceased in April 2023.
“I think we’re all hopeful that the circuit court will get to the right answer,” Ryan Mulvey, an attorney with the Americans for Prosperity Foundation and plaintiffs’ counsel, said in an interview Monday. “This entire case has been about fighting for our fishermen and small family businesses to get rid of what we thought was a really onerous regulation.”