Rhode Island Fisherman Join Lawsuit Over Federal Monitors

By Christian Wade | The Center Square contributor, The Center Square New Jersey

December 19, 2022

(The Center Square) – Rhode Island commercial fishermen have signed on to a federal lawsuit challenging a rule requiring boat captains to pay for federal monitors to observe catches.

The fishermen, represented by the New Civil Liberties Alliance, have filed an amicus brief siding with fishermen from other Northeast states in a case pending before the U.S. Supreme Court challenging the new monitoring requirements.

In a court filing, lawyers representing the fishermen call on justices to "halt a regulation which allows the National Marine Fisheries Service to charge fishermen unlawfully for a government function Congress has not approved and apparently does not believe to be worth spending Americans’ tax dollars on."

The lawsuit was filed last month in the U.S. District Court in New Jersey, by a group of commercial fishermen who want to stop the federal government from making them pay for workers who gather data aboard fishing boats.

At issue is a 2020 federal rule implemented by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that requires industry-funded monitoring. The monitors go out on commercial fishing vessels to collect data that's used to craft new regulations.

NOAA announced earlier this month, that it was suspending the program until April, citing a lack of funding for administrative costs. But fishermen went ahead with the lawsuit, saying they want to end the program.

The legal challenge, led by plaintiff Loper Bright Enterprises of New Jersey, argues the new rules will force fishermen to pay more than $700 per day to contractors, which makes fishing financially unsustainable. A federal judge rejected the lawsuit, but the fishing groups filed a petition to the high court.

A representative for NOAA declined to comment, citing pending litigation.

Plaintiffs suggest a ruling in the case could force the high court to overturn the so-called "Chevron deference," a decades-old administrative law principle that directs courts to defer to a federal agency’s interpretation when regulations or policies are unclear.

The principle stems from the Supreme Court’s 1984 ruling in Chevron v. National Resources Defense Council, in which the justices said courts should defer to an agency in "ambiguous situations" as long as its interpretation of a law is "reasonable."

Kara Rollins, NCLA's litigation counsel, said when the courts apply the Chevron deference in cases, "the government wins at staggering rates, and almost exclusively to the detriment of ordinary Americans and small businesses."

“Whatever question the ‘bare quorum of the Court’ that decided Chevron thought it was answering all those years ago, it has morphed into a threat to individuals’ civil liberties and the federal judiciary’s core duty to determine the nation’s laws impartially," she said.

The harvest of Atlantic herring, which is typically used as food and bait, is a major fishery on the East Coast, with 11 million pounds of landings in New England, New York and New Jersey valued at $6.6 million last year.

But NOAA cites data showing the species is overfished and has set tight catch quotas in recent years that fishermen say have considerably shrunken the yearly haul.

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