Tag Archives: legal challenge

Alaska Supreme Court upholds legality of fish landing tax

Fishermen’s Finest, a Washington state seafood company that operates factory trawlers and exports most of its product overseas, had challenged the state’s tax in court. It argued that there are protections against state taxation on shipping in coastal state waters, and a lower state superior court agreed. But the justices, writing in a unanimous opinion, found that the fees assessed on Fishermen’s Finest’s products are not unconstitutional “The landing tax is not opportunistic taxation of vessels ‘merely transiting’ adjacent waters without landing or benefitting from any local services,” the justices wrote. >click to read< 08:56

A legal war, a Biden win: What’s next for Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Marine Monument?

Lobstering groups say they aren’t opposed to protecting the natural habitats that sustain their industry. But they question whether the 5,000-square-mile monument is consistent with the Antiquities Act’s provision that designations be limited to the “smallest area compatible” with protecting the rich supply of marine life and corals that populate the Atlantic site. They also questioned the Obama administration’s position, which Trump officials have defended in court,,, Blocking off industry’s access to thousands of square miles of the Atlantic Ocean should require a little more public input, the fishing groups argue. Trump instead chose to preserve the site, although he traveled this summer to Maine to announce that he would lift all fishing restrictions in the monument.,, And in a matter of weeks, President-elect Joe Biden, who was vice president when Obama created the Atlantic monument, will be sitting in the White House. >click to read< 08:05