Supreme Court Adds Second Appeal Seeking to Strip Agency Power

The US Supreme Court accepted a second appeal from fishing companies seeking to overturn a decades-old legal doctrine that has given federal regulators broad power to define their authority.

The appeal, which takes aim at a 1984 ruling known as Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, is virtually identical to one the court agreed in May to hear.

The difference is that all nine justices will now be able to take part. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson is recused from the case the court accepted earlier because she was involved in the litigation as a federal appeals court judge. The court said it will hear arguments in January.

Democratic administrations have relied heavily on the so-called Chevron doctrine in recent years, using it to justify rules governing energy, the environment and the workplace. The Chevron decision said courts should defer to administrative agencies when they offer a reasonable interpretation of an unclear statute.

The cases involve a federal requirement that some vessels fishing for herring off the Atlantic coast hire monitors for conservation and management purposes. The challengers say Congress didn’t authorize the National Marine Fisheries Service to require fishing companies to pay for the observers.

The new case is being pressed by three affiliated fishing companies based in New England. A Boston-based federal appeals court invoked the Chevron ruling in rejecting the companies’ challenge to the payment requirement.

The appeals court said the payment requirement, which isn’t currently in effect, was based on a reasonable interpretation of the 1976 Magnuson-Stevens Act, a law that governs the management of marine fisheries in federal waters.

The new case is Relentless v. Department of Commerce, 22-1219. The case granted in May is Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, 22-451.

To contact the reporter on this story:
Greg Stohr in Washington at gstohr@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Elizabeth Wasserman at ewasserman2@bloomberg.net

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