Commercial fishing groups are turning to a recent Supreme Court decision undercutting agency power in their legal battle to reverse the approval of a wind farm off the coast of Massachusetts.
Seafreeze Shoreside and other groups claimed in a new petition to the high court that a lower bench should not have deferred to the Biden administration’s interpretation of federal law to authorize the 62-turbine Vineyard Wind 1 project, one of roughly three dozen wind farms in the works along the Eastern Seaboard meant to advance the former president’s climate agenda.
“This is a stark example of federal administrative agencies shirking their responsibilities to follow the law. When that happens, we are here to hold their feet to the fire,” said Ted Hadzi-Antich, a senior attorney at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, which is representing the challengers, in a statement Tuesday.
Seafreeze and other groups are relying on the Supreme Court’s 2024 ruling in Loper Bright v. Raimando that reversed Chevron deference, which for 40 years had directed courts to defer to agencies’ reasonable interpretations of ambiguous laws.
