CIT Grants Wildlife Advocacy Groups' Dismissal of Suit to Ban Import of Fish From 9 Countries' Fisheries
The Court of International Trade granted three wildlife advocacy groups' voluntary dismissal of a case seeking an import ban on fisheries from nine countries after the groups reached a settlement with the U.S. government. Judge Gary Katzmann dropped the case, though he retained jurisdiction over the matter to oversee implementation of the settlement, at the parties' request.
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The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), the Center for Biological Diversity and the Animal Welfare Institute brought the suit to allege that fisheries in Canada, Ecuador, France, India, Indonesia, Mexico, South Africa, the U.K. and South Korea failed to meet U.S. standards. The groups said the Commerce, Treasury and Homeland Security departments and the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) failed to undertake their mandated duty to ban fish from these fisheries under the Marine Mammal Protection Act (see 2408080028).
In settling the suit, NMFS established a four-phase schedule through which it will implement the MMPA (see Ref:2501170058]). Under phase one, NMFS issued notifications to all harvesting nations that didn't submit an application for a comparability finding and to all harvesting nations that the commerce secretary preliminarily denied a comparability finding for all of their fisheries. Under phase two, NMFS issued notifications to all harvesting nations that the agency preliminarily denied comparability findings for one or more of their fisheries.
In phase three, which is set to be completed on or before Sept. 1, NMFS "will issue final comparability findings for all harvesting nations and submit such findings to the Federal Register for publication.” Lastly, under phase four, set to be completed on or before Jan. 1, 2026, NMFS will ban the importation of fish from fisheries that have been denied a comparability finding and issue a rationale for its final comparability findings.
Katzmann took note of the settlement and granted the advocacy groups' voluntary dismissal of the case after retaining jurisdiction over the implementation of the settlement. The parties "included a provision in their proposed dismissal order that explicitly retains jurisdiction over the Stipulated Settlement Agreement," the court noted.
The court also corrected a clerical mistake in the settlement agreement. The agreement omitted a signature line, which Katzmann said is a "mechanical mistake." Correcting the mistake "creates no procedural prejudice or delay as all parties jointly requested that the court correct the error," the court said.
(Natural Resources Defense Council v. Howard Lutnick, Slip Op. 25-29, CIT # 24-00148, dated 03/25/25; Judge: Gary Katzmann; Marissa Grenon Gutierrez of Anderson & Kreiger for plaintiffs led by Natural Resources Defense Council; Stephen Tosini for defendant U.S. government)