——– Most recent court filings at 11/6/24 below ——–
4/30/24 Amendment 16 was published in the Federal Register.
5/24/24 UCIDA/CIFF filed a legal challenge, a “Motion to Enforce Judgement,” with Judge Kindred at the Federal District court in Anchorage. In this filing we explained how NMFS violated the substantive requirements of the Court’s order when it published final regulations implementing Amendment 16. Our motion listed many specific legal objections to Amendment 16 that were not compliant with the Magnuson – Stevens Act. These included a wrong definition of a “fishery,” not achieving Maximum Sustained Yield (MSY), not achieving Optimum Yield (OY), not addressing each of the 10 National Standards and bifurcating the fishery into 2 separate fisheries, a Federal water fishery and a State water fishery.
5/29/24 UCIDA/CIFF filed a complaint, opened a new lawsuit and requested the court vacate Amendment 16. Our complaint covered all the issues listed above and more.
6/5/24 NMFS and the State responded to the motion to enforce judgement.
6/10/24 UCIDA/CIFF filed a response to NMFS and the State
6/18/24 NMFS published “Cook Inlet; Final 2024 Harvest Specifications for Salmon” in the Federal Register.
6/26/24 Judge Kindred denied our motion to enforce judgement.
7/08/24 Judge Kindred officially resigned; Judge Gleason replaced him on our case.
7/16/24 UCIDA/CIFF filed a legal challenge: “Complaint for Declaratory Judgment and Injunctive Relief and Petition for Review,” which requested the court to vacate the harvest specifications and consolidate the 2 separate cases (the case challenging Amendment 16 and the case challenging the harvest specifications.)
7/22/24 NMFS filed an answer to our complaint and the State of AK filed a motion to intervene.
8/09/24 UCIDA/CIFF filed a “Motion to Stay Deadlines and Consolidate Cases” requesting consolidation of the cases “Amendment 16” and “Harvest Specifications.”
9/11/24 Federal Judge Gleason consolidated both cases and ordered a complete Administrative Record by NMFS.
9/16/24 NMFS filed Administrative Record with Federal Court. NMFS also filed a reply to our complaint against the harvest specifications with a blanket denial of all the points in our complaint.
9/27/24 Judge Gleason explained Kindred’s reason for denying our motion on 6/26/24. She explained that at that time the court didn’t have all the information needed such as NMFS’s Administrative Records.
11/06/24 UCIDA/CIFF filed Opening Brief in Federal Court.
Opening Brief Declaration of David Martin
12/06/24 NOAA/NMFS, Secretary of Commerce (SOC) reply brief is due, unless a 14 day extension is requested.
12/20/24 (Approximately) UCIDA/CIFF’s reply to the Federal Court of case will be ready for oral argument. Once our complaint, the NOAA/NMFS/SOC reply and our final reply are filed with the Federal Court, our case is ready for oral argument. We expect to have oral arguments before Judge Gleason in Jan. 2025. Once oral arguments are complete, our case is ready for a judicial decision. When? We do not know. However, Judge Gleason is aware that the current combined case is the third failed attempt by NOAA/NMFS to write an MSA-compliant Fishery Management Plan for our fishery.
