Fishermen's Supreme Court fight against government monitors could make big splash
A Supreme Court case brought by a group of herring fishermen from New Jersey could upend government's ability to regulate health care, environment and tax collection. CAPE MAY, N.J. -- For nearly 50 years, America's herring fishermen have been required to take federal monitor s on their boats when they set out into the North Atlantic in search of a big catch. Aboard cramped private trawlers, the monitors record the health of fish and of the sea. But when regulators asked the fishermen to pay the monitors' salaries, many said the government had gone too far. "We don't mind taking observers, you know, we have for decades now," said Stefan Axelsson, a third-generation herring fisherman. "But to be told to pay for it just isn't right." "Me and everybody around me is concerned about that, highly concerned," added Bill Bright, who has been in the herring business for four decades, "because the margins are so tight right now." Th...