New York v. Ross

On July 30, 2019, the federal district court for the Eastern District of New York dismissed New York State’s lawsuit challenging the National Marine Fisheries Service final rule that established the 2019 quota for summer flounder (also known as fluke) and allocated 7.64699% of the quota to New York. The case may be reopened no later than April 30, 2020, which corresponds to the federal defendants’ anticipated finalization of new state-by-state quotas for summer flounder. In the lawsuit, New York alleged that New York’s quota was based on an outdated allocation adopted in 1993 and based on data from 1980 to 1989. New York said that in the more than 30 years since the data were collected, the center of the summer flounder had shifted significantly to the northeast and that the center of commercial fishing activity was not close to Long Island, with boats from North Carolina and Virginia traveling to fish in waters off Long Island and then returning south to land their catch. New York asserted that the 2019 quota and the Fishery Management Plan (FMP) for summer flounder were inconsistent with the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act because, among other reasons, they were not based on the best scientific information available. New York also claimed that the 2019 quota and FMP were arbitrary and capricious because they were based on obsolete landings data and ignored substantial changes to the summer flounder fishery since those data were compiled, as well as the current state of the fishery. The district court closed the case after receiving a letter from the federal defendants indicating that they anticipated issuing a proposed rule revising the 1993 state-by-state quotas in September 2019 and finalizing the regulation in March or April 2020.

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