NE Legal Foundation files amicus in fisheries case
The New England Legal Foundation is urging the U.S, Supreme Court to consider stopping the National Marine Fisheries Service from forcing fishing boat owners to pay the daily wages of federal inspectors, or “observers,” whom the fishing vessels must quarter and accommodate during their fishing trips.
In an amicus brief filed in the request for certiorari by plaintiffs in the case of Loper Bright Enterprises, et al. v. U.S. Secretary of Commerce, et al, NELF contends that Congress has only authorized NMFS, under the 1996 Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act – the primary law that governs marine fisheries management in U.S. federal waters – to require that at-sea observers “be carried on board” domestic fishing vessels “and nothing more.”
Amicus brief author, NELF Senior Staff Attorney Ben Robbins, said the Foundation is interested in this case, “because an administrative agency, acting without any identifiable statutory authority, has required certain fishing vessels within the already beleaguered New England herring fishery to pay the daily wages of federal inspectors, or ‘observers,’ whom the fishing vessels must carry on board during their fishing trips.”