January 21, 2024 — The New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA), which has been representing commercial fishermen in an ongoing case before the U.S. Supreme Court, expressed cautious optimism that the court would align with their reasoning following oral arguments.
“After many years, our clients were finally before a court that seemed disinclined to defer to the agency they have been fighting as to what the law is,” NCLA Senior Litigation Counsel John Veccione said.
January 21, 2024 — The U.S. Supreme Court is weighing what could be one of the most important decisions it makes this term: whether to uphold a 1984 legal precedent known as Chevron, which states that federal courts must defer to regulatory agencies when a law is ambiguous.
But a lawsuit filed by three commercial fishermen at the Jersey Shore could sink Chevron.
Environmentalists fear that would greatly curtail the power of federal regulators such as the Environmental Protection Agency, as well as a broader spectrum of agencies handling public health and safety.
In short, the fishermen are objecting to a regulation that requires them to pay observers to ensure their vessels comply with federal regulation while at sea. Cape May-based commercial fishing operations, run by Bill Bright, Wayne Reichle, and Stefan Axelsson, filed a suit, Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, which is backed by conservative groups seeking to overturn Chevron.
January 18, 2024 — A pair of spirited Supreme Court hearings on January 17th confronted a question at the heart of American democracy: what is the balance of power among the three branches of the federal government? The justices seemed inclined to shift that balance towards their own chambers.
The cases under review both involve fishermen objecting to a regulation requiring them to pay hefty fees for monitors who keep an eye on them as they troll for herring. The rule was issued in 2020 by the National Marine Fisheries Service, an agency of the executive branch. It was then blessed by two circuit courts of appeal as consonant with the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, a law passed by Congress in 1976.
January 18, 2024 — Members of the Supreme Court’s conservative majority seemed inclined on Wednesday to limit or even overturn a key precedent that has empowered executive agencies, threatening regulations in countless areas, including the environment, health care and consumer safety.
Each side warned of devastating consequences should it lose, underscoring how the court’s decision in a highly technical case could reverberate across wide swaths of American life.
Overruling the precedent, Solicitor General Elizabeth B. Prelogar told the justices, would be an “unwarranted shock to the legal system.”
But Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh responded that there were in fact “shocks to the system every four or eight years when a new administration comes in, whether it’s communications law or securities law or competition law or environmental law.”
January 17, 2024 — The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday appeared divided over a bid to further limit the regulatory powers of federal agencies in a dispute involving a government-run program to monitor for overfishing of herring off New England’s coast.
The justices heard arguments in appeals by two fishing companies of lower court rulings allowing the National Marine Fisheries Service to require commercial fishermen to help fund the program. The companies – led by New Jersey-based Loper Bright Enterprises and Rhode Island-based Relentless Inc – have argued that Congress did not authorize the agency, part of the U.S. Commerce Department, to establish the program.
The companies have asked the court, with its 6-3 conservative majority, to rein in or overturn a precedent established in 1984 that calls for judges to defer to federal agency interpretation of U.S. laws deemed to be ambiguous, a doctrine called “Chevron deference.”
The questions posed by the justices did not reveal a clear majority willing to overturn the precedent. Some of the conservative justices seemed skeptical of the doctrine’s continuing force. Others signaled hesitation about reversing it. The court’s liberal justices appeared ready to preserve the doctrine’s deference to the expertise of agencies.
January 17, 2024 — I’ve spent eight years fighting the federal government to protect my livelihood. I’ve even filed a lawsuit in federal court. Now, the Supreme Court is set to hear a case like mine on Wednesday, Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo.
The stakes are much higher than just protecting fishermen like me. This is a chance to restore representative democracy, real accountability and the constitutional system that protects every American’s liberty.
This case is about family-owned herring fishing companies in New Jersey. They’ve been forced by unelected federal bureaucrats to pay for monitors who ride on their boats and look out for illegal fishing activities. Following the law is a good thing, but the government should pay for its own monitors. Federal law never required the fishermen to cover this cost, and they can’t afford the $700 to $900 daily fee. It’s going to run them out of business.
January 17, 2024 –– The U.S. Supreme Court will hear a case today, brought by fishing interests who are friends of Saving Seafood, which could upend the Chevron doctrine. The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in two cases, Loper Bright Enterprises, Inc. v. Raimondo, Sec. of Comm. (22-451) and Relentless, Inc. v. Dept. of Commerce (22-1219).
From National Public Radio:
Judges are supposed to follow a two-step procedure. First, they’re supposed to ask whether the law is clear when someone challenges a federal rule. Then, if the law is not clear, if there’s an ambiguity, the court is supposed to defer to the agency interpretation if it’s reasonable.
In practice, that’s meant that courts often defer to people inside federal agencies who are experts on things like pollution, banking and food safety.
But all of it could be upended by a conservative supermajority on the court at the request of an unlikely set of plaintiffs: a group of herring fishermen based in Cape May, N.J.
One of them is Bill Bright, a first-generation fisherman whose family has followed him to the sea.
“My boys are working on the boats,” Bright said. “And my daughters, we have a shoreside business and they run that. So we’re all, the whole family is, in the seafood business 100%.”
Bright said he welcomes regulations to keep the herring population strong in the Northeastern United States. But he said the fisheries service went too far when the government mandated that vessel owners like him had to pay for observers on the boats to make sure they’re following the rules.
Paul Clement, a former solicitor general in the George W. Bush administration, has argued more than 100 times before the Supreme Court. He represents the herring fishermen.
“Can’t think of a better way to mark the 40th anniversary of the Chevron decision than with an overruling,” Clement said. “In our view, this really has gotten out of control.”
He said the current system means Congress never has to weigh in and reach a compromise on the toughest policy questions, because one side or the other can just wait for a change in the executive branch every four or eight years, and the rules will swing back and forth based on the views of the political party in power.
“I think it’s really as simple as this: which is when the statute is ambiguous, and the tie has to go to someone, we think the tie should go to the citizen and not the government,” Clement added. “And one of the many problems with the Chevron rule is it basically says that when the statutory question is close, the tie goes to the government, and that just doesn’t make any sense to us.”
January 18, 2024 — Arguing on behalf of commercial fishermen from New Jersey and Rhode Island, lawyers with conservative legal activist groups made their case before the U.S. Supreme Court Wednesday for reversing a 40-year precedent, and sharply cutting back the regulatory powers of federal agencies.
During a three and a half-hour hearing, the court’s conservative majority appeared skeptical of the government’s arguments in two related cases – dubbed Relentless v. Department of Commerce and Loper Bright v. Department of Commerce – brought on behalf of herring fishermen in Rhode Island and Cape May, N.J.
The fishermen 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 hinge 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 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
January 17 2024 — The Supreme Court on Wednesday wrestled over whether to fiddle with − or even overturn − a 40-year-old precedent that has guided how federal agencies protect the environment, workers, consumers and more.
“How do we know where the line is?” Justice Clarence Thomas asked in opening more than three and a half hours of debate over how much deference courts should give federal agencies when the law is unclear.
While the cases before the court on Wednesday were brought by herring fishermen who objected to being forced to pay for federal inspections of their catch, the court’s decision could undo decades of rules and procedures involving land use, the stock market, and on-the-job safety.
January 16, 2024 — Business and conservative interest groups that want to limit the power of federal regulators think they have a winner in the Atlantic herring and the boats that sweep the modest fish into their holds by the millions.
In a Supreme Court term increasingly dominated by cases related to former President Donald Trump, the justices are about to take up lower profile but vitally important cases that could rein in a wide range of government regulations affecting the environment, workplace standards, consumer protections and public health.
In cases being argued Wednesday, lawyers for the fishermen are asking the court to overturn a 40-year-old decision that is among the most frequently cited high court cases in support of regulatory power. Lower courts used the decision to uphold a 2020 National Marine Fisheries Service rule that herring fishermen pay for monitors who track their fish intake. A group of commercial fishermen appealed the decision to the Supreme Court.