The Supreme Court and U.S. Fisheries

The Supreme Court’s decision to overturn the Chevron Doctrine threatens American fisheries and opens the floodgates for dangerous rollbacks of environmental protections

The Supreme Court of the United States has upended the role of expert federal agencies in implementing laws, posing severe risk to the regulations that keep our fisheries sustainable, air and water clean, children free of toxins, buildings and factories safe, financial markets stable and more. The Supreme Court issued its opinion on  two fishery cases in June 2024, Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo and Relentless v. Dept. of Commerce. The court’s decision on these combined cases overturned the 40-year-old Chevron Doctrine (named after the 1984 Supreme Court case that set the precedent) that guides how federal courts interpret the implementation of certain statutes by government agencies. The Court severely curtailed how much deference federal agencies are given when interpreting and applying federal laws,  using cases being brought before the Supreme Court by United States herring fishermen.

With this ruling, the Supreme Court clearly showed that this case was never just about fish. Instead, New England’s Atlantic herring fishery was used as a Trojan Horse to attack the foundations of the public agencies that serve the American public and conserve our natural resources. The protections that keep our air and water clean, our homes and workplaces safe, and our communities, our children and ourselves healthy rely on the knowledge and experience of scientists and experts, and all that is now at risk.

Meredith Moore

Director, Fish Conservation, Ocean Conservancy

News Coverage

• ABC News
• Associated Press (US)
• Scientific American

The Case

Fishermen were being asked to help share the costs of independent observers on board fishing vessels. These observers collect important data to ensure our fisheries are managed to avoid overfishing. This is a key part of our sustainable management system, widely regarded as one of the best in the world. The Supreme Court did not take up claims related to the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act or the observer requirement directly. In fact, the observer program in question never went into effect. Instead, the court skipped the fish questions entirely and only answered the question of whether government agencies should receive judicial deference when the language of a statute isn’t completely clear. Ocean Conservancy joined with conservation partners and filed an amicus curiae, or “friend of the court” brief in the case. An amicus is someone who is not party to a lawsuit but who petitions the court to file a brief in the action because they have a strong interest or expertise in the subject matter. Participating in this seminal case as an amicus furthers Ocean Conservancy’s goals for a healthier ocean protected by a more just world.

What Does the Ruling Mean?

The consequences of this case are serious for fishery management, but also more broadly for critical environmental and social programs. This is part of a broader effort to weaken the role of science and expertise in the way our government operates. Our federal agencies need to be able to implement laws based on their expertise. This is important for fisheries, but it’s also critical as we take on the huge challenges of climate change. Beyond fisheries, this ruling threatens important decisions about many aspects of American life—the efficacy of drugs, the soundness of financial institutions, the safety of workers, toxins in children’s toys, the risk of pollutants in our air and water and more. 

Overturning Chevron deference empowers the courts, the branch of government least accountable to the people, to make sweeping decisions with significant consequences for people and the environment. Instead of scientists and experts making decisions on how to interpret the laws as set by Congress, federal judges will make the call. These judges likely have no expertise in things like fishery management, or issues like how much exposure to chemicals is safe for children.

The Fishery Management System

Atlantic herring are among the nearly 500 fish stocks that are actively managed as public resources in the United States. That management system depends on experts to determine what is needed to keep our fisheries sustainable for the long-term. Fishery observers and at-sea monitors are the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Fisheries’ eyes and ears on the water. These observers are professionally trained biological technicians who gather first-hand data on what’s caught and discarded by U.S. commercial fishing vessels. The high quality data observers collect are used to monitor federal fisheries, assess fish populations, set fishing quotas and make sure our fish and fishermen have a future.

Requiring the fishing industry to cover some or all of the cost of observers is not new or unique to this situation. In reality, industry-funded observer programs were created as early as 1990 and managers have continued to create these programs under the Magnuson-Stevens Act in the more than 30 years since.

Decades ago, American fisheries were on the brink of collapse, and what made recovery possible—what kept fishing communities in business and seafood on American dining room tables—was strong science-based management decisions rooted in data. This case jeopardizes our access to critical information about America’s fisheries, which is the exact opposite of what we need to handle the fast-growing impacts of climate change.

Meredith Moore

Director, Fish Conservation, Ocean Conservancy

Many fisheries still struggle to avoid overfishing, which threatens resources that belong to all of us and the livelihoods of those who rely on them. Everyone (including fishermen) relies on monitoring data to prevent overfishing, preserve fishing economies and keep marine ecosystems intact.

The New England Fishery Management Council’s observer program for the herring fishery followed the course set by regional fishery management councils over decades. The herring fishery has collapsed before and is now in a delicate state. The Atlantic herring stock crashed again in 2018, it is currently overfished, and fishing for them also results in incidental catch of haddock, river herring and shad. Reliable data collected by on-board observers is essential for effective fishery management and ensuring that this stock of fish can be rebuilt to sustainable levels. All ocean users—including fishermen—benefit when fishery managers have access to reliable observer data.

The specifics of the herring cases have now been sent back to the lower courts to be reconsidered. The on-the-water impacts of this Supreme Court decision on the herring fishery is unclear in the near term, as the observer program at the heart of the two cases was never actually implemented. But this ruling will have far-reaching impacts on our fisheries on a broader scale; the science-based expert decisions at the foundation of our fishery management system will now face an onslaught of litigation. With climate change stressing ocean ecosystems, we need to be acting to build resilience for fish populations by setting climate-informed catch levels, restoring habitats and supporting fishing community adaptation. The Supreme Court’s ruling in the Loper case could tie the hands of managers and harm the ocean we all love and depend on.