After six years of litigation and a nearly six-week trial earlier this year, a Wake County judge has ruled that the state has failed to manage and protect coastal fisheries.
In his nearly 200-page order issued Aug. 17, Superior Court Judge Bryan Collins Jr. explained that the court, “based on the preponderance of the evidence” finds that the state has “breached its obligations under the public-trust doctrine” as directed in the North Carolina Constitution.
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Coastal Conservation Association North Carolina and more than 80 others filed the lawsuit Nov. 10, 2020, against the state for what the nonprofit calls “North Carolina’s ‘abject failure’ in meeting its legal duties to properly manage coastal fisheries resources on behalf of North Carolina’s current and future citizens.”
CCA NC Executive Director David Sneed told Coastal Review last week that although this is the outcome the organization wanted, “this is not a moment for celebration. There is no real victory when our fisheries are depleted. The important thing now is that the magnitude of the problem has been recognized.”
During the trial held Jan. 20 to Feb. 25, Collins heard from witnesses representing both sides of the lawsuit, including fisheries scientists, independent researchers, and current and former staff with the North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries. The division carries out the rules and regulations that the Marine Fisheries Commission approves and adopts. The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality is the parent agency for the commission and division.
The judge ruled that in the 30 years since the North Carolina General Assembly established the Fisheries Reform Act in 1997, in response to decades of declining abundance, the state has failed to rebuild and maintain healthy fish stocks and protect key habitats.
Sneed said that next steps “are to bring together the general public, scientists, managers, and policymakers to find practical ways to protect and restore North Carolina’s fisheries,” and to fulfill the directive on page 190 of the ruling. “The court ordered both sides to meet and then submit a joint report to the court within 45 days with their views on how the remedy phase of the case should move forward.”
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DEQ Secretary Reid Wilson briefed the Marine Fisheries Commission during its Aug. 20 meeting in Raleigh about the judge’s ruling against the state in the case. He explained that staff were reviewing court documents and speaking with their colleagues at the Department of Justice about what happens next.
“There is a next phase, the remedy phase, and I don’t think anyone in this room knows how all this is going to turn out. But obviously, you all on the commission, we at the department, the division, and stakeholders are going to be working together in the coming years, once we have a final answer from the court system about what we’re supposed to do to address what this particular judge found, so that’s going to be a big focus probably for years,” he said.
Based on extensive testimony, the judge ruled that the “State’s failures are not the product of any one decision, but rather, are the product of a systemic, decades-long pattern of risk-prone management dominated by short-term commercial-industry considerations to the detriment of North Carolina’s coastal fisheries and the general public.”
Expert opinions cited in the ruling point to some decisions erring “on the risky side” including the General Assembly amending the Fisheries Reform Act in 2004 to remove the buffer implemented in 1997, which allowed more fish to be harvested. The change put the threshold hovering over the minimum level at which a stock is no longer classified as overfished.
The judge also points to the act’s failing because of gaps in stock mortality data for commercial fishing, bycatch and discards, and a lack of stock assessments for some species, and the interests of the nine-member Marine Fisheries Commission, which votes on the laws for coastal fisheries and fishing.
The appointed board members include two from the commercial fishing industry, one representing the seafood industry, two with the recreational fishing industry, a scientist, and two members at large. “Thus, at least three of the nine seats-a full one-third-are reserved for individuals with a direct financial interest in the private, for-profit harvest of coastal fisheries resources, even though commercial-license holders comprise less than one-tenth of one percent of the State’s citizens,” the judge found.
One witness testified that the way the commission is currently structured, voting is interest based. Another said that commissioners prioritized their sector instead of making informed decisions based on the science and resource-protection materials provided before official meetings.
“The evidence at trial also included numerous examples of instances in which the MFC’s structural defects caused management failures, including where a conservation-oriented measure was recommended by DMF and was defeated at the MFC,” Collins wrote, citing as examples proposed rule changes to commercial fishing gear and harvest reductions.
Collins quoted one witness who said “the MFC has ‘always bowed to the commercial fishing [industry].’”
The North Carolina Fisheries Association attempted to intervene in the lawsuit when it was first filed but was denied. The nonprofit group represents the state’s commercial fishing industry.
Association Executive Director Glenn Skinner told Coastal Review earlier this week that the organization is currently reviewing the ruling and has no comment at this time.
How the state governs coastal fisheries today
Public outcry on the declining stocks in the late 20th century pushed state lawmakers to restructure how the public-trust resource was managed.
The General Assembly, in recognizing “the need to protect our coastal fishery resources and to balance the commercial and recreational interests through better management of these resources,” enacted the resulting legislation, the 1997 Fisheries Reform Act “to ensure the long-term viability of the State’s commercially and recreationally significant species or fisheries.”
Long-term viability is the legal standard that requires fish stocks to be maintained at healthy, self-sustaining levels and retains a healthy age structure.
Collins writes that the act “was touted as ushering North Carolina into modern fisheries management, and the intended solution for the decline in coastal fisheries abundance observed in the last quarter of the 20th century.” He also notes that the “expectation was that the FRA would be the statutory framework for reversing the long-term trends in declining abundance for multiple managed species or developing precautionary management plans for those fisheries where landings had increased to a point that declines seemed imminent.”
The law authorized the governor-appointed Marine Fisheries Commission to manage and regulate marine and estuarine resources within coastal waters. As part of that framework, the act directed the Division of Marine Fisheries to draft science-based fishery management plans “for all commercially or recreationally significant species or fisheries that comprise State marine or estuarine resources” for the commission to approve and adopt.
The state currently manages stocks through fisheries management plans for bay scallop, blue crab, eastern oyster, hard clam, estuarine striped bass, river herring, southern flounder, spotted seatrout, striped mullet, kingfishes, sheepshead, shrimp and red drum.
“The evidence at trial, however, including from the State’s own witnesses, confirmed that the State is not managing to long-term viability, and instead, is focused on processes, rather than outcomes measured by the long-term viability standard,” according to the ruling. “Given the State’s admissions and the unrebutted expert testimony that not a single one of the 13 state-managed stocks exhibits long-term viability, the State has necessarily failed to meet those affirmative duties.”
The University of North Carolina Collaboratory in January 2026 released its supplemental report on state fisheries management, which the General Assembly had commissioned in 2021, and corroborated the expert testimony, according to the court ruling.
The judge references the study’s findings, notably that the state’s “fisheries are ‘intensely managed,’” and that there are continued challenges in reaching core goals of the Fisheries Reform Act.
Key points in the study, as referred to by the judge, are that the management planning process is slow, the state has failed to manage ecosystems and critical habitats are degrading, the Marine Patrol, the enforcement arm of the division, doesn’t have enough staff to cover the state’s estuarine and coastal waters, and there’s overall dissatisfaction and distrust of state management.
North Carolina Wildlife Federation CEO Tim Gestwicki told Coastal Review in a phone conversation last week that “we have a judge’s ruling that is crystal clear.” In February 2022, the organization filed an amicus brief in support of the CCA NC’s lawsuit.
“The state has failed in its obligation to manage public trust resources, and no gray area, and when the judge says it’s time for drastic changes, that should be a pretty clear signal,” he said, adding that the data has been there a long time.
“When you combine the collaboratory independent study that came out, and you combine this irrefutable judge’s ruling, there is no escape now. Change must occur,” he said. “It’s not the North Carolina Wildlife Federation saying this. It’s not the CCA. It is independent scientists and a long legal journey through which every step the plaintiffs were affirmed. So this is about validation and affirmation that North Carolina has had and continues to have significant deficiencies in managing marine fisheries.”
