US Supreme Court Overturns Chevron Decision, Strikes NOAA Regulatory Authority

A lawsuit filed by New Jersey herring fishermen has dealt a massive blow to the authority of U.S. regulators.

On June 28, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of the fishermen’s plaintiffs in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, striking down the long-standing Chevron rule—a legal precedent that gave federal agencies broad discretion to interpret congressional statutes—and limiting NOAA Fisheries’ authority to implement the rules without clear guidance from lawmakers.

“Today is a truly special day and the culmination of nearly a decade of work to protect fishermen’s rights,” Seafreeze Fisheries liaison and CEO Mehan Lapp said of the ruling. “We finally saw a return to “Equality before the Law,” as written above the entrance to the Supreme Court. Fishermen and other American citizens will no longer lose their rights due to judicial obedience to government agencies. “From now on, NOAA and other federal agencies will have to think about the consequences of their actions without benefiting Chevron.”

The court ultimately struck down deference to Chevron in a 6-3 vote, with Supreme Court Justice John Roberts outlining the court’s reasons for overturning the 40-year-old precedent. In his opinion, Roberts found Chevron incompatible with the Administrative Procedure Act. He also said that regulators do not have the expertise needed to resolve statutory ambiguities, while “the courts do.”

“As noted, the framers of the statute anticipated that courts would frequently be confronted with statutory ambiguities and expected them to resolve them by exercising independent legal judgment,” Roberts said in his opinion. “Congress expects courts to address technical statutory questions … and the courts did so without difficulty in the agency cases before Chevron.”

With Chevron deference expiring, courts will have greater influence over the interpretation and implementation of congressional statutes and the regulations adopted by agencies to implement those statutes.

“Federal officials tend to ignore the legitimate concerns of American fishermen about overregulation,” said Jerry Leeman, CEO of the New England Fishermen’s Stewardship Association. “We are grateful to the Supreme Court for breaking this trend. We are especially grateful to the plaintiff fishermen of Relentless and Loper Bright who have spent years fighting for their fishing brothers and sisters around the world.”

The case of Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo got off to an inauspicious start in 2020 when NOAA Fisheries issued new requirements forcing some commercial fishermen to pay for offshore monitors to watch their activities. Some fishermen, unhappy with the ongoing costs, which they say could exceed $700 (640 euros) a day, have filed a lawsuit.

The fishermen lost in court in 2021 over deference to Chevron, prompting judges to push back against the government’s own interpretation of the law. However, in 2023, the Supreme Court announced that it would take up this and a similar case – Relentless, Inc. v. U.S. Department of Commerce – specifically to reconsider the Chevron precedent. Oral arguments were presented before the Supreme Court in January this year.

“This ruling is long overdue,” said John Vecchione, senior litigation counsel for NCLA. “Allowing agencies to pick pockets of the regulated without congressional authorization is contrary to every principle of representative government and our constitutional structure.”

The ruling also drew criticism, with ocean conservation group Oceana condemning the decision as an attack on responsible fisheries management.

“Fishery observers are our eyes on the water that help keep fisheries healthy; without them, we operate in the dark,” Oceana Vice President of Oceans Beth Lowell said in a statement. “This case was a fundamental attack by a segment of the fishing industry on responsible fisheries management in the U.S. Some fishermen want to operate in the dark, without supervision, and return to the Wild West of fishing in U.S. waters, but these companies are fishing on a public resource and profiting from the fish caught in our oceans. Without monitoring, restrictions become irrelevant and rules become suggestions. Observers help prevent overfishing and rebuild fisheries, and now that may be at risk.”

Lowell added that the ruling allows politically elected judges, rather than experts from government agencies, to make decisions on fisheries management policy.

In her dissenting opinion, Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan defended Chevron Deferent’s approach of relying on government experts to interpret ambiguous statutes within reasonable limits.

“Congress knows we don’t – in fact you can’t – write perfectly complete regulatory statutes,” Kagan said. “They know that those statutes will inevitably contain ambiguities that another entity will have to resolve and gaps that another entity will have to fill. And they would typically prefer that entity to be the responsible institution rather than the court.