PROVIDENCE – The U.S. Supreme Court will hear a pair of cases that have been combined, one of which involves a Narragansett fishing company, that could impact the power of federal agencies.
The nation’s top court has agreed to hear the recently combined cases of Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo and Relentless v. U.S. Department of Commerce that could impact the Chevron deference, a 1980s decision that says federal courts should defer to a federal agency’s interpretation of ambiguous statutes that it oversees.
Oral arguments are set for Jan. 18, and the case could affect everything from the environment to health care and the economy, according to a Bloomberg Law report.
F/V Rentless is a vessel is owned by Seafreeze Fleet, LLC, a Point Judith fishing company that filed a federal lawsuit to stop the Vineyard Wind offshore wind project. Loper Bright Enterprises is a former firm from Cape May, N.J., that represented herring fishers.
FormerR.I. Gov. Gina M. Raimondo, who is now U.S. secretary of commerce, is named in both cases.
The cases were combined because they are challenging the regulations of the National Marine Fisheries Service, which imposes a per-diem fee on vessels to pay for a federal official required on fishing trips to monitor compliance with fisheries rules under the Magnuson-Stevens Act. In this case, both companies were charged a $170 per-diem fee.
In August 2022, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit applied Chevron deference to uphold the National Marine Fisheries Service’s interpretation of a federal fishery law – the Magnuson-Stevens Act – allowing the use of people to monitor compliance on certain fishing boats.
While the federal law is silent on who must pay for the use of such monitors, the judges deferred to the NMFS’ interpretation of the statute. “Although the act may not unambiguously resolve whether the service can require industry-funded monitoring,” Judge Judith Rogers wrote in her opinion, “the service's interpretation of the act as allowing it to do so is reasonable.”
The fishermen appealed the ruling to the Supreme Court, arguing the lower court's decision “perceives ambiguity in statutory silence, where the logical explanation for the statutory silence is that Congress did not intend to grant the agency such a dangerous and uncabined authority.”
The fishermen urged the high court to reconsider its approach to the Chevron deference, stating, “Whether by clarifying Chevron or overruling it, this Court should grant review and reverse the clear agency overreach at issue here.”
The Supreme Court agreed to combine the cases in October.
