Judge: Feds must redo red snapper seasons

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A judge has ruled that federal regulators used a false claim of emergency to cut the federal season for red snapper off of Texas and Louisiana, and did so to punish those states for setting seasons and catch limits beyond federal dates and limits.

U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen, of Brownsville, Texas, overturned the emergency rule under which the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s fisheries division set one season for the popular game fish off Mississippi and Alabama and others off Texas, Louisiana and Florida.