Supreme Court Case About Fishing Fee Has Huge Ramifications

The Supreme Court on Wednesday is taking up challenges by commercial fishermen to a fee requirement that could achieve a long-sought goal of business and conservative interests: limiting a wide swath of government regulations. Billions of dollars are potentially at stake in front of a court that, like the rest of the federal judiciary, was remade during Donald Trump's presidency by conservative interests that were motivated as much by weakening the regulatory state as social issues including abortion. Lawyers for the fishermen are asking the justices to overturn a 40-year-old decision that is among the most frequently cited high court cases in support of regulatory power, including on the environment, public health, workplace safety, and consumer protections, the AP reports.

Lower courts used the decision known colloquially as Chevron to uphold a 2020 National Marine Fisheries Service rule that herring fishermen pay for government-mandated observers who track their fish intake. The 1984 decision states that when laws aren't crystal clear, federal agencies should be allowed to fill in the details as long as they come up with a reasonable interpretation. "Judges are not experts in the field, and are not part of either political branch of government," Justice John Paul Stevens wrote for the court in 1984, explaining why they should play a limited role. The court ruled 6-0, with three justices recused. As the New York Times explains, "on paper," the case is "about a group of commercial fishermen who oppose a government fee that they consider unreasonable"—but there's a lot more to it than that.

Opponents of the Chevron doctrine argue that judges apply it too often to rubber-stamp decisions made by government bureaucrats. Judges must exercise their own authority and judgment to say what the law is, the lawyers for the company that owns the Rhode Island based Relentless and Persistence fishing boats told the court. Conservative billionaire Charles Koch is backing the case, and one expert on environmental law explains why to the Times: "It might all sound very innocuous, but it's connected to a much larger agenda, which is essentially to disable and dismantle federal regulation." The Biden administration said that overturning the Chevron decision would produce a "convulsive shock" to the legal system, and environmental, health advocacy, civil rights, and organized labor groups are pushing for it to remain in place. (More regulation stories.)