July 10, 2023 — If longtime New Hampshire groundfisherman Dave Goethel were an I-told-you-so kind of guy, this would be his moment.
Goethel, a 2004 National Fisherman Highliner, was the plaintiff in a 2015 lawsuit, subsequently joined by Northeast Fishery Sector 13, that opposed NOAA’s requirement that fishing vessels pay upward of $700 per day for at-sea monitors.
The case was dismissed. A federal court said it should have been filed within 30 days of the observer program’s creation, not 30 days after NOAA later decided to charge fishermen.
Goethel’s appeal was dismissed as well.
If the courts got rid of his lawsuit, they couldn’t get rid of Goethel. Now retired, his name is on an amicus (friend of the court) brief in the Supreme Court case of Loper Bright Enterprises, a family-owned herring fishing company that is raising the same issue Goethel raised.
The issue as most of us relate to it is whether the Magnuson-Stevens Act implicitly grants NOAA the authority to compel fishermen to pay observer salaries. The underlying question, however, is how much leeway a federal agency has when implementing laws passed by Congress.