Bureaucrats threatened to sink my fishing business. Supreme Court can keep others afloat.
I’ve spent eight years fighting the federal government to protect my livelihood. I’ve even filed a lawsuit in federal court. Now, the Supreme Court is set to hear a case like mine on Wednesday, Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo.
The stakes are much higher than just protecting fishermen like me. This is a chance to restore representative democracy, real accountability and the constitutional system that protects every American’s liberty.
This case is about family-owned herring fishing companies in New Jersey. They’ve been forced by unelected federal bureaucrats to pay for monitors who ride on their boats and look out for illegal fishing activities. Following the law is a good thing, but the government should pay for its own monitors. Federal law never required the fishermen to cover this cost, and they can’t afford the $700 to $900 daily fee. It’s going to run them out of business.
New regulation threatened to wipe out my income
The same thing happened to me starting in 2015. Before those bureaucrats went after herring fishermen, they went after ground fishermen. I was told I had to fork over $700 a day for the monitors who rode on my boat, despite no such mandate in federal law. At the time, my take-home pay from a typical trip was about $300. I was set to lose money every time a monitor came aboard.
I sued, but I lost. People like me never stand a chance because of something called the "Chevron deference." Since the 1980s, judges basically defer to anything federal bureaucrats do, so long as the bureaucrats say they’re interpreting a federal law that they claim is vague. They can even say that if Congress didn’t explicitly prohibit something, they can regulate all they want.
What happened to the Constitution?
The way I learned it in civics class, Congress has the sole power to pass laws. Congress has the sole power to levy taxes. And Congress is accountable to the American people. If we don’t like those laws or those taxes, we go to the ballot box and vote for people who reflect our views.
Congress must act: Our national debt has topped $34 trillion. Does anyone actually have the guts to fix it?
But I can’t vote for the bureaucrats who tried to destroy my livelihood. I definitely can’t vote them out. All I can do is what I did: Beg them to stop hurting me, everyone like me, the workers we hire and the millions of people we feed. My pleas fell on deaf ears because bureaucrats don’t need to listen to me. What can I really do to them?
I got relief. I contacted one of my senators and asked if she could help. Ever since, she has added language into annual federal legislation that gives groundfish fishermen the money to cover monitoring costs, temporarily.
Federal bureaucrats don't answer to voters
But that only proves why this fiasco is so unjust. Members of Congress are responsive to the people because the people vote for them. My representatives and senators take my calls, or at least their offices do. The bureaucrats who have the real power never pick up.
They’re far more responsive to special interests like large industrial fishing companies. Those groups know how to work the system to get the rules they want. Small fishermen like me don’t. And so the rules never work in our favor.
Deer hunting is dying. That should worry you even if you don't hunt.
I retired in 2022, mainly out of fear that my days as a groundfish fisherman were numbered. At that time, the federal government was set to require observers on every fishing trip, which started earlier this year.
Imagine having to pay a state trooper to accompany you on your ride to work and watch over your shoulder all day long. Maybe I would have found a way out of that mandate, like I did the last one. Maybe I wouldn’t have. Either way, countless others haven’t been so lucky, like the family-owned companies at the center of this Supreme Court case. And this is just one of the millions of rules that federal agencies release without direction from Congress or respect for the Constitution.
Opinion alerts: Get columns from your favorite columnists + expert analysis on top issues, delivered straight to your device through the USA TODAY app. Don't have the app? Download it for free from your app store.
How many people have had their money taken, their businesses destroyed and their dreams crushed by officials who were never elected? How many frustrated Americans have voted for a change, only to find nothing changes because the real decisions come from unelected bureaucrats, not representatives and senators? There are no checks or balances, no accountability. There’s just the power of the bureaucracy.
The Supreme Court needs to end the unconstitutional insanity of the Chevron deference. This is about taking power from people who shouldn’t have it and giving it back to the people who should: the Americans who elect new leaders every two years.
If Congress didn’t put it in a law and the president didn’t sign it into law, bureaucrats shouldn’t be able to do it. So long as they can, our liberty is in danger, and that matters far more than the fate of fishermen like me.
David Goethel is a retired fisherman from Hampton, New Hampshire. He is the author of "Endangered Species: Chronicles of the Life of a New England Fisherman."
You can read diverse opinions from our Board of Contributors and other writers on the Opinion front page, on Twitter @usatodayopinion and in our daily Opinion newsletter.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Supreme Court must reel in bureaucracy to save small businesses
