Columbus, OH – On Friday, The Buckeye Institute filed an amicus brief with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in Relentless v. U.S. Department of Commerce, calling on the court to reverse the lower court’s ruling and throw out a U.S. Department of Commerce rule that forces commercial fishermen to house, feed, and pay the salaries of their government-mandated monitors.

“In 1767, in his first letter from a Farmer in Pennsylvania, John Dickinson warned of the dangers of the British Parliament forcing the American colonists to quarter British soldiers,” said David C. Tryon, director of litigation at The Buckeye Institute. “What the British sought to do to American colonists, the National Marine Fisheries Service now seeks to do to Atlantic herring fishermen.”

In its brief, the second in this case, The Buckeye Institute argues that 1) the Department of Commerce rule, and a New England Fishery Management Council requirement that fishermen fund government-monitoring, violate the constitutional principles underlying the Third and Fourth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution; and 2) Congress’s silence on the issue does not empower the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) to force fishermen to pay the salaries of government-mandated monitors living on their boats. In reaching its decision, the lower court ignored the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark decision overturning the Chevron doctrine—judicial deference to executive agencies’ interpretation of the law.

When it passed the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, Congress did not give the NMFS the authority to force fishermen to pay the salaries of government-mandated monitors living on their boats. But short on funds, the NMFS—an agency in the U.S. Department of Commerce—adopted a rule that requires herring fishermen in the Atlantic Ocean to carry, house, and pay their government minders. The owners of the Relentless—represented by the New Civil Liberties Alliance and supported by The Buckeye Institute—went to court to throw out this unconstitutional rule and overturn Chevron. Relentless won, and the case was returned to the trial court to evaluate the NMFS rule based on the law’s language, not the agency’s interpretations of what Congress wrote.

# # #