CASE
SUMMARY
The U.S. government tried to force charter boats and companies that take customers fishing and sightseeing in the Gulf of Mexico to purchase a vessel monitoring system (VMS). Federal agencies would have used VMS tracking devices to monitor boats’ movements and whereabouts on the water, even when they are not using their federal permits to fish. NCLA’s class-action lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Commerce, NOAA, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), and their heads, contends that these agencies were mandating an unlawful 24-hour GPS surveillance regime without a warrant.
NCLA’s named clients, for-hire vessel operating companies and captains, would have been affected by a final rule that Commerce, NOAA, and NMFS intended to enforce. The rule would have forced owners or operators of charter vessels or for-hire vessels in the Gulf to submit electronic fishing reports using NMFS-approved hardware and software with GPS location capabilities that “at a minimum, archive vessel position data during a trip for subsequent transmission to NMFS.” The rule also would have required that captains pay for the vessel equivalent of an ankle bracelet. NCLA contended these agencies could not issue a regulation that would monitor law-abiding captains more closely than many paroled prisoners.
The agencies claimed this rule was meant to “increase and improve fisheries information collected from federally permitted for-hire vessels in the Gulf.” But NCLA argued that warrantless access to the GPS information of a person’s locations and movements would have amounted to an unreasonable search violating the Fourth Amendment and violated Ninth Amendment rights, including the right to privacy, freedom of movement, free enterprise, freedom from unreasonable governmental interference, and the right to travel. Since plaintiffs would have been the sole owners of their devices’ data, its seizure without cause would also have violated the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause.