Fishing Companies Blast Use of Chevron Deference in Key Case at High Court

The Supreme Court hasn't decided a case using its decision in Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council since 2016, prompting the question not of whether it should be overruled but whether the high court "should let lower courts and citizens in on the news," commercial fishing companies led by Loper Bright Enterprises argued. Filing a reply brief in a key case on Chevron, which grants deference to federal agencies in interpreting ambiguous statutes, the fishing companies said the decision "has already proven itself unworkable, and its corrosive effects on our separation of powers have lingered long enough" (Loper Bright Enterprises v. Gina Raimondo, Sup. Ct. # 22-451).

Under Chevron, agencies' interpretation of statutes are approved with minimal oversight should the statute prove ambiguous. It is a doctrine often championed by U.S. trade agencies in their enforcement of antidumping and countervailing duty proceedings. The Supreme Court granted writ of certiorari in November 2022 to hear the commercial fishing companies' case. Justice Neil Gorsuch already has expressed open contempt for the doctrine in a November 2022 dissenting opinion, dubbing the use of Chevron deference the "kind of judicial abdication" unwarranting of sustenance (see 2211080058).

In its reply brief, Loper Bright and its fellow fishing firms said the decision has "little (if any) precedential force," given that the decision is only rooted in historical tradition "by distorting history and ignoring what" the doctrine actually requires. There is no "historical pedigree" for deference to an agency when it "abandons longstanding views and shifts the law 180 degrees within some ill-defined zone of reasonableness," though Chevron requires this, the brief said.

The fishing companies filed their case to challenge a National Marine Fisheries Service rule requiring the industry to pay for the costs of compliance monitors with fishery management plans.