Court rules North Carolina violated legal duty to protect coastal fisheries

Court rules North Carolina violated legal duty to protect coastal fisheries © American Sportfishing Association

The Wake County Superior Court has ruled in favor of the Coastal Conservation Association of North Carolina ("CCA NC") and 86 individual citizens in their lawsuit to hold the State accountable for failing to protect North Carolina's coastal fisheries.

The Court's 190-page ruling, which followed a six-week trial earlier this year, held the State liable based on "overwhelming evidence" that the State breached its legal obligations to North Carolina citizens. Further proceedings addressing remedies needed to cure the State's management failures and restore North Carolina's once-abundant coastal fisheries are expected to follow.

The lawsuit was filed in 2020 by CCA NC and 86 citizen plaintiffs, including 5 former members of North Carolina's Marine Fisheries Commission. Through six years of hard-fought litigation, CCA NC was able to prove that by allowing North Carolina's coastal fisheries to deteriorate and collapse, the State violated the legal rights of North Carolinians to fish and harvest fish—rights guaranteed to them under the public-trust doctrine and the North Carolina Constitution.

The six years of litigation included proceedings before the Court of Appeals, which unanimously ruled in favor of CCA NC and the individual plaintiffs in 2022. In that ruling, the Court of Appeals held that the State has "an affirmative duty" under the public-trust doctrine and the North Carolina Constitution to "preserve the people's right to fish and harvest fish," which includes a "duty to preserve fisheries for the benefit of the public" and a "duty to keep fisheries safe from injury, harm, or destruction for all time." In the Wake County Superior Court's ruling yesterday, the Court applied that decision as binding precedent, finding that the extensive evidence at trial, including comprehensive expert testimony, "overwhelmingly established" that the State has failed to meet those standards. As one of many examples of the State's extensive failures, the Court cited undisputed evidence that not a single one of North Carolina's 13 state-managed coastal fish stocks is currently viable.

CCA NC Executive Director David Sneed praised the Court's ruling as "an opportunity," urging North Carolina's fisheries managers and elected officials to bring about fisheries management reforms to rebuild our overfished and collapsed coastal fisheries, and then keep them sustainable once restored. "With this ruling, we are calling on the general public, our elected officials, our scientific community, and state fisheries managers to join together with us, roll up our sleeves, and commit to doing the hard work necessary to restore our coastal fisheries resources for the benefit of all citizens and future generations. Coastal fishing in our great State could have such a bright future, and we owe it to our children and grandchildren to make it a reality."

Sneed and Donald Willis, the Chair of CCA NC's Board of Directors, added their sincere thanks to the many witnesses and fisheries-management experts who testified at trial and played a significant role in supporting the litigation, as well as CCA NC's General Counsel, Dr. Tim Nifong, and the legal team at Poyner Spruill who took the case to trial.

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