Tag Archives: Ryan Mulvey

A Small Fish and an Uncollected Fee Add Up to Big-Government Challenge at the Supreme Court

October 31, 2023   Mid Atlantic, National

The case could undercut the power of federal regulators on major issues including air pollution and securities fraud. It also exemplifies the way many of the high court’s biggest fights are born these days — driven less by the practical aims of the litigants than by the ideological vision of the interest groups behind the suits. The fight concerns a federal requirement that some herring boats host government-approved observers aboard their vessels and cover an estimated $710 daily cost. The fisherman say that would be an onerous burden on their family-owned businesses — so onerous they are suing even though the fee is on hold and might never kick in. “We have not had to pay. We’re just nervous about this hanging over our head,” said Bill Bright in an interview in Cape May, New Jersey, where he runs his two-vessel fishing business. “So we feel that we need to solve this problem now.” Photos, >>click to read<< 11:14

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Courts threaten to sink federal fishery monitoring

June 5, 2023   Gulf of Mexico, Mid Atlantic, National, Pacific

NOAA suffered a major blow in February when a three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Louisiana threw out a rule that would have required charter boats in the Gulf of Mexico to be equipped with electronic monitors to report fish catches. Fishermen complained that the devices would cost them as much as $3,000 per boat. And the agency may be poised for an even bigger setback from the Supreme Court. Justices last month said they would take up a case that could decide whether NOAA has the legal authority to force New England herring fishermen to hire third-party contractors to monitor their fishing at a cost of up to $700 per day. >click to read< 13:55

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Herring Fishermen lose challenge to rule requiring at-sea monitors

June 16, 2021   Mid Atlantic, National

A federal judge in Washington D.C. on Tuesday denied the bid of New Jersey-based herring fishermen who sued the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) last year to block a new regulation that will require them to pay for third-party “at-sea monitors” who will survey by-catch. U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan ruled that the agency had not acted in violation of the MSA,,, About half-a-dozen small fishing vessel operators, including the Loper Bright Enterprise, brought the lawsuit last year. >click to read< 11:57

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