M&B News
CCA Continues Fight Against Sector Separation
Controversial sector separation ruling goes to U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit has announced that it will receive briefs on
Coastal Conservation Association’s appeal of the ruling on its Amendment 40 lawsuit on April
27.
Amendment 40 is a controversial plan that created a charter/for-hire sector in the Gulf of
Mexico red snapper fishery and reserved a significant percentage of the recreational quota exclusively for its use. It is widely understood that the new charter/for-hire sector will emulate the
privatized commercial red snapper sector in which shares of red snapper are privately owned
by individuals for their own use and profit. Earlier this year, a lower court ruled against CCA’s
arguments opposing Amendment 40, electing instead to defer to NOAA Fishery’s interpretation of statutory provisions governing the nation’s marine resources.
“We believe there is simply too much at stake to not continue the fight on this issue,” said
Bill Bird, chairman of CCA’s National Government Relations Committee. “The federal government clearly intends to carve up public marine resources and distribute them to businesses to
use for their profit, and we believe that is a fundamentally wrong course of action. While it is
very common for courts to give federal agencies discretion in interpreting the wishes of Congress, we believe NOAA Fisheries is far outside its bounds in this
case. We are hopeful the Court of Appeals will examine the facts
more critically, rather than simply deferring to NOAA Fisheries’ dubious judgement.”
The principle that courts should defer to an agency's interpretation of a statute is known as the Chevron Doctrine and has its roots in
a 1984 Supreme Court ruling. Last week, a bill was introduced in the
U.S. Senate that would clarify that courts, not agencies, are to interpret all questions of law, including both statutes and regulations. The
bill’s sponsors say the Chevron Doctrine has allowed agencies like
NOAA Fisheries to rewrite laws and issue regulations as they see fit.
“It is inconceivable that anyone in Congress intended for NOAA
Fisheries to not only allow public marine resources to be privatized,
but to encourage and facilitate such schemes at the expense of the
public,” ͅ