Advancing American Freedom led a coalition of 33 other amici in filing an amicus brief in Relentless v. Department of Commerce, the case that brought down Chevron.
After the Supreme Court struck down the Chevron Doctrine in 2024, it remanded this case to the district court to decide, without deference to the agency’s interpretation, whether the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) can compel American fishing companies to pay the expenses and salaries of a government observer when the statute in question, the Magnuson-Stevens Act, does not empower the NMFS to do so.
The NMFS’s attempt to have the costs of its regulatory scheme covered by fishers without congressional authorization violates the Constitution’s separation of powers and that this sort of extra-constitutional lawmaking is part of the DNA of the administrative state.
“For a century, the administrative state has slowly accrued more and more power that the Constitution vests in the people’s representatives. They aren’t going to give up that power easily,” said AAF General Counsel J. Marc Wheat. “The First Circuit should constrain the NFMS to its statutory directives and protect the prerogatives of Congress.”