Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry said Judge Rya Zobel's ruling was a "really disappointing decision and I hope it will be appealed and reversed."
"It's not a close call, it's a bad call when we're talking about the livelihoods that hang in the balance," he said. "The way regulations are interpreted and enforced have sent too many fishermen into bankruptcy and pushed even more to the brink."
The aim is to give fishermen more autonomy at sea and flexibility to catch certain species of fish when market prices are higher. But the suit argued the catch allotments were unfairly determined by regulators, and so low that the region's small boat fleet will inevitably collapse.
Zobel called it a "close call," but agreed with the fisheries service that no vote was needed. The service argued the allocations are not hard quotas because fishermen in a sector combine and share them, and can conceivably catch more or less than their allocation.
Zobel also rejected claims that the catch allotments were unfairly divided, with some favored groups given more fish than others.
Read the complete story by Jay Lindsay of The AP at The Boston Globe.