The U.S. state of North Carolina is appealing a court ruling that found evidence “overwhelmingly” shows the state's government failed to protect coastal fisheries.
North Carolina Attorney General Marc Bernstein filed notice of the state’s intent to appeal on 16 September, roughly a month after Judge Bryan Collins of the Wake County Superior Court determined the evidence presented in court showed the state “failed to meet its ‘obligation to manage and protect fisheries for the benefit of the general public’ as required under the public-trust doctrine.”
The ruling was a response to a lawsuit filed in 2020 by the Coastal Conservation Association of North Carolina (CCA NC) and 86 citizen plaintiffs, who alleged inadequate state management had led to deteriorating coastal fisheries. In 2022, a state appeals court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, determining that “the state did not properly manage the fisheries so as to forever preserve the fish populations for the benefit of the public” and that the state could be sued for that failure.
The appeals court then remanded the case back to a district court to ensure the evidence supported the allegations.
In a 190-page 17 August decision, Collins reported that the evidence overwhelmingly supported the plaintiffs’ claims that the state’s fisheries management was inadequate. Testimony in the case was damning, with Senior Executive Director of the Harte Research Institute at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi Greg Stunz calling North Carolina’s fisheries management “the worst” he’d seen in the U.S., and Colonel Carter Witten, who led the state’s Marine Patrol, stating that severe staffing limitations prevented law enforcement from tackling regular violations.
Despite the blunt ruling against them, the state is once again looking to the appeals court for relief. The appeal is supported by the N.C. Coastal Counties Fisheries Coalition, as well.
The decision to appeal was immediately criticized by CCA NC.
“We are disappointed that the State has chosen to file a meritless, procedurally improper appeal rather than focus its energy on addressing the serious problems identified at trial and moving the State’s fisheries managers toward practical, science-based solutions. This meritless appeal does not change the need to act to restore our coastal fisheries, and North Carolinians have waited long enough for meaningful progress,” CCA NC Executive Director David Sneed said in a statement. “After nearly six years of hard-fought litigation and a six-week trial centered on extensive scientific evidence and fisheries data – including undisputed evidence that not a single one of North Carolina’s 13 state-managed coastal fish stocks is currently viable – the Court ruled that the State of North Carolina failed in its legal responsibility to protect and preserve the public’s coastal fisheries.”
