The U.S. Supreme Court denied to hear a case Monday brought by fishermen against the Department of Commerce (DOC) for forcing fishers to pay for an on-board monitor to ensure fishing limits are followed, according to the Cause of Action Institute (CAI).
Groundfisherman David Goethel and Northeast Fishery Sector 13 petitioned the Supreme Court to hear the case after U.S. District Court for New Hampshire and the First Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed the lawsuit. The District Court and First Circuit both said the suit was filed too late, according to CAI.
“The Department of Commerce has gone beyond the bounds of the law in putting this financial burden of more than $700 per day on small-scale fishing businesses in the Northeast,” CAI Vice President Julie Smith said in a statement.
“Because the New England Fishery Management Council has announced its intention to extend this unlawful requirement to other fishermen, we will continue to look for ways to challenge that and to require the Department of Commerce to follow the law,” Smith added. “This fight is not over.”
The DOC implemented the At-Sea Monitoring Program in 2010, but deferred enforcing a provision that required the fishing industry to pay for monitors on board fishing boats. From 2010 through 2015, the federal government paid for the monitors through funds appropriated from Congress, according to court documents.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced in Nov. 2015 that the provision would be enforced starting Jan. 1, 2016. The fishermen’s suit came less than a month after the announcement was made, alleging the government cannot collect payments from private businesses for the costs of monitoring.
The courts never addressed the merits of the case, but they ruled that the time to sue had passed. Petitions for cases against federal regulations must be “filed within 30 days after the date on which the regulations are promulgated or the action is published in the Federal Register, as applicable,” according to court documents.
“I’ve been fishing my entire adult life, and I will try to continue, but the costs associated with at-sea monitoring will be crushing,” Goethel said in a statement. “We may have lost the battle, but the war to save the fishing industry from overregulation is far from over.”
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