June 20, 2023 — Encouraged by New Jersey herring fishermen’s application to the U.S. Supreme Court, lawyers for Rhode Island captains are likewise asking the high court to consider what they say is “an unconstitutional rule requiring fishing companies to pay for at-sea government monitoring of their herring catch.”
The legal activist group New Civil Liberties Alliance petitioned the court June 14 for a “writ of certiorari” in its case representing Point Judith, R.I. companies Relentless Inc., Huntress Inc. and Seafreeze Fleet LLC.
Their case challenges a 2020 rule imposed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that required vessel operators to pay for observers on their vessels at sea, at a cost that owners say can exceed $700 daily and sometimes exceed the money they make from landing low-priced herring.
The Supreme Court could soon hear arguments in a case called Loper Bright, named for one of several Cape May, N.J. fishing companies fighting the observer requirement that lost their initial case in court but appealed. NOAA waived the rule earlier this year as it ran short of money to administer the program. But fishermen want to make sure the observer requirement is not renewed, and conservative advocacy groups see their cause as a chance to overturn a long-standing precedent called the “Chevron deference.”