A panel of federal judges appeared skeptical Monday that Hawaii can levy a tax on cruise ship passengers to offset the costs of climate change.
During oral arguments, the cruise industry and the Trump administration urged the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to reverse a ruling by a lower bench that gave Hawaii the green light to impose the first-in-the-nation fee.
The 9th Circuit temporarily paused the ruling in December, blocking the tax from going into effect in January. Industry and government lawyers on Monday told a three-judge panel it should be permanently erased.
The tax — an 11 percent surcharge on the gross fare paid by a cruise ship’s passengers, prorated by the portion of its voyage spent docked in Hawaiian ports — runs afoul of the federal Rivers and Harbors Appropriation Act of 1884, argued Benjamin Snyder, an attorney representing the Cruise Lines International Association.
