March 19, 2025 — Last June, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the longstanding Chevron deference – a legal precedent stemming from the 1980s that gave federal agencies wide latitude in interpreting congressional statutes.
That move, according to Robert Smith, a partner at Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A.-based law firm K&L Gates, could turn the U.S. seafood industry into a more litigious environment in the near future.
March 14, 2025 — In another move aimed at offshore wind, the fishing industry is attempting to take its fight against Vineyard Wind to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Responsible Offshore Development Alliance, a national coalition of fishing industry associations and companies, and the conservative think tank Texas Public Policy Foundation filed separate petitions last week requesting the Supreme Court to review decisions by a lower court.
Both organizations unsuccessfully petitioned to shutdown Vineyard Wind — the first large-scale offshore wind project approved in the United States and located 15 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard — in the U.S. First Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston last year.
The petitioners say the project was rushed through by the Biden Administration in an effort to establish an American offshore wind industry without considering the consequences.
March 13, 2025 — The Supreme Court has denied a hearing for a coalition of Maryland fishing associations and charter boat operators seeking to overturn new striped bass fishing restrictions. But for Captain Robert Newberry, chairman of the Delmarva Fisheries Association, the legal battle is far from over.
“It’s not good that we were denied the hearing in front of the Supreme Court, but this is far from over. We are in it to win it. We will be announcing our next move within a week,” Newberry said.
The coalition had filed an emergency petition with the Supreme Court to block the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s new restrictions, arguing they imposed “drastic, unwarranted, and illegal limitations” on striped bass fishing in the Chesapeake Bay and along the Atlantic coast. The March 4 petition claimed the regulations violated the U.S. Constitution and threatened the livelihoods of small fishing businesses.
March 12, 2025 –A national fishing industry group and conservative think tank have petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to take up their lawsuits challenging the approval of the Vineyard Wind project, which has been under construction since 2023.
The lobbying group, Responsible Offshore Development Alliance (RODA), sued the lead government regulator of offshore wind in early 2022, alleging the agency violated several acts, including those to protect existing ocean users and endangered species.
At the crux of RODA’s appeal to the Supreme Court is the language of the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, and particularly, how the federal government interpreted it.
The Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF), which represents fishermen and a fishing company in Rhode Island in another lawsuit, is similarly arguing the federal government did not correctly interpret statutes in its approval of the Vineyard Wind project.
RODA has long argued that offshore wind farms will interfere with fishermen’s ability to catch fish, reduce vessel safety at sea, and potentially harm the viability of commercial fisheries.
But RODA lost its case twice: 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.
The Texas Public Policy Foundation also had its case dismissed by the lower courts.
RODA says the Interior Department during the first Trump administration correctly interpreted statutory language, requiring that the Interior Secretary “shall ensure” approved activities, including offshore wind projects, are consistent with a requirement to prevent interference with “reasonable uses” on the outer continental shelf, including the use of a “seabed for a fishery.”
March 11, 2025 — Commercial fishing industry advocates appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court to hear their challenge of federal permits that authorized the ongoing Vineyard Wind 1 project off southern New England.
The first approved commercial-scale wind energy project in federal waters, the Vineyard Wind federal “approval sets the precedent for all future U.S. offshore wind development,” said the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance, a coalition of fishing groups and communities.
The case was brought March 10 on behalf of fishermen by the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative legal advocacy group. It asks the high court to reverse a federal appeals court decision that upheld federal permits for the 804-megawatt Vineyard Wind project.
March 11, 2025 — A coalition of Maryland fishing associations and charter boat operators have escalated their legal battle against new striped bass fishing restrictions, filing an emergency petition with the U.S. Supreme Court seeking to block the regulations.
Capt. Robert Newberry, chairman of Delmarva Fisheries Association stated, “We will take this case to the highest court until this matter is resolved — it is far from over.”
The Delmarva Fisheries Association and the Maryland Charter Boat Association, along with two individual commercial fishermen, argue that the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s recent measures impose “drastic, unwarranted, and illegal limitations” on striped bass fishing in the Chesapeake Bay and along the Atlantic coast. The petition, filed March 4, claims the restrictions violate the U.S. Constitution and could jeopardize the livelihoods of many small businesses.
March 11, 2025 — The Responsible Offshore Development Alliance (RODA) has appealed its case against the Vineyard Wind offshore wind project to the Supreme Court of the United States.
RODA, a lobbying group representing commercial fishermen, first filed a lawsuit against in 2022 in objection to federal approvals of the wind energy project. The 800-megawatt project, located in an area off the coast of the U.S. state of Massachusetts, is planned to take up as much as 75,000 acres.
January 13, 2025 — The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to hear the challenge of Vineyard Wind brought by the Nantucket-based nonprofit ACK For Whales, effectively ending the group’s legal effort to stop or delay the wind farm under construction southwest of the island.
The effort to bring its case to the nation’s highest court was a long shot – as the U.S. Supreme Court accepts only 2 percent of the 7,000 cases brought to it each year – and on Monday the court informed ACK For Whales that it had declined to hear its petition for certiorari.
ACK For Whales had alleged that the federal agencies that permitted the Vineyard Wind project violated the Endangered Species Act by concluding that the project’s construction likely would not jeopardize the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale. The group also asserted that the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management had violated the National Environmental Policy Act by relying on a “flawed analysis” from the National Marine Fisheries Service.
Two lower courts had previously dismissed the case, and the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision on Monday brings ACK For Whales’ legal challenge of the Vineyard Wind project to an end.
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
September 26, 2024 — The Nantucket anti-offshore wind organization ACK for Whales is pushing a lawsuit targeting the Vineyard Wind project to the U.S. Supreme Court.
On Monday, the group officially requested the Supreme Court review its appeal of a decision reached by the U.S. First Circuit Court of Appeals.
It is yet to be seen whether the Supreme Court will actually review the case.