Momentous Supreme Court cases sometimes arise from more pedestrian events. The justices will hear oral arguments for one such case on Wednesday. Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo has to do with commercial fishing. A national law passed in 1976 requires federal observers to accompany fishing boats. These observers make sure those vessels and their crew comply with “fishery management plans,” which the fishermen are obligated to obey.
Starting in 2020, bureaucrats began reading the law as obligating the boats and their companies to foot the bill for the monitors, writing an agency regulation to that effect. This new reading can cost these fisherman thousands of dollars a week when many already operate on thin margins in a business on which their livelihood depends.
