A Court Just Told North Carolina It Failed Its Fishermen — All of Them
For decades, anglers working the sounds, inlets, and nearshore waters of North Carolina have watched something disappear. The flounder runs got thinner. The croaker counts dropped. The weakfish — once so abundant they were practically a nuisance — became a ghost. What generations of coastal families took for granted as an essentially inexhaustible resource revealed itself, quietly at first and then all at once, to be something deeply fragile. On August 18, 2026, a North Carolina Superior Court judge put a name to who is responsible.
In a landmark decision that could have major implications for North Carolina's coast, Superior Court Judge Bryan Collins ruled that the state failed to meet its constitutional obligation to protect its coastal fisheries. The ruling lands not just as a legal rebuke but as a reckoning — a formal acknowledgment that a state blessed with some of the most productive coastal waters on the Eastern Seaboard allowed those waters to be stripped, one season at a time, under the watch of the very agencies charged with their protection.
The Case That Built to This Moment
How the Lawsuit Began
In November 2020, the Coastal Conservation Association of North Carolina and 86 North Carolina citizens filed a lawsuit against the state, arguing that it had broken its legal and constitutional promise to the people of North Carolina. The plaintiff list was notable not just for its size but for its composition. The legal action included five former members of the N.C. Marine Fisheries Commission — insiders who had sat at the table where management decisions were made and who understood precisely where the system had broken down.
The lawsuit details how North Carolina's coastal fisheries suffered chronic decline under the state's decades-old management approach of allowing maximum, unsustainable exploitation of this public resource, primarily by the commercial fishing industry, including the continued authorization of estuarine shrimp trawling in waters heavily populated by juvenile fish, unattended gillnets, and chronic overfishing of flounder and other popular species. This wasn't a fringe environmentalist complaint. It was a detailed, evidence-backed indictment of a regulatory apparatus that had, by any honest measure, been captured by the interests it was meant to regulate.
The complaint alleged that North Carolina allowed and facilitated several commercial fishing practices that resulted in damaging coastal fish stocks and destroying habitat. Multiple fish species had declined 84 to 98 percent since major fisheries management reform was enacted in 1997. Those numbers are not abstract. They represent the difference between waters that could support a recreational fishing economy, a charter boat industry, and a coastal culture — and waters that cannot.
The State's Defense Strategy
Rather than engage directly with the evidence of decline, North Carolina's legal team pursued a procedural escape route. The state responded to the lawsuit in January 2021 by filing a motion to dismiss the plaintiffs' claims. Among its various arguments, it asked the court to give it immunity from lawsuits of this kind. The state also denied that it had any responsibility to hold in trust and manage coastal fisheries resources for the benefit of its current and future citizens.
That position — that the state owed its citizens no enforceable duty to keep the fish in the water — struck many observers as extraordinary. "For the State to argue in court that it has no responsibility for preserving our coastal fisheries is deeply concerning," said Bert Owens, Chairman of the Coastal Conservation Association of North Carolina's Board of Directors. The argument also carried a remarkable legal ambition: the state was asking the appellate court to do something no court in the history of the nation had done before — give the state sovereign immunity from the public trust doctrine, a foundational tenet of public governance that predates the birth of the country.
The Long Road Through the Courts
The state attempted to have the case dismissed in 2021 and sought summary judgment in 2024. Both motions were denied. Each failure to kill the case in its procedural infancy pushed the fight closer to what everyone knew would be a consequential trial. A unanimous panel of the N.C. Court of Appeals ruled that the state could be sued for failing to protect North Carolinians' fishing rights — a decision in September 2022 that effectively confirmed the lawsuit had legal legs and would see a courtroom.
After several court wins for the association against moves by the state to dismiss the case, the trial began January 20 of 2026. The case went to a full five-week trial that ended in February 2026. It was an intensive proceeding that brought together fisheries scientists, marine biologists, lifelong commercial and recreational fishermen, and policy experts. Witnesses included experts on both sides and several lifelong fishermen telling the court the changes they had seen over their decades on the water.
Even the state's own expert witnesses came with credentials that underscored just how seriously the science was being taken. The state concluded its defense with testimony from Dr. Joel Fodrie, Director of the UNC-Chapel Hill Institute of Marine Sciences and lead scientist on the UNC Collaboratory Legislative Study of Coastal and Marine Fisheries; Dr. Joseph Hightower, emeritus retired professor at NC State University's Department of Applied Ecology; and Dr. Frederick Scharf, Department Chair of UNC Wilmington's Department of Biology and Marine Biology. The presence of such academic firepower on the state's side speaks to how hard Raleigh fought — and ultimately lost.
What the Judge Actually Said
Superior Court Judge Bryan Collins' 190-page ruling arrived nearly six months after he conducted a multiweek trial. The length alone signals the depth of analysis brought to bear. Collins was not making a snap judgment. He was working through six weeks of dense scientific testimony, historical data, regulatory records, and constitutional law before arriving at conclusions that now carry enormous weight.
His ruling was unambiguous. Collins wrote that "on this trial record reflecting approximately six weeks of evidence, and after carefully weighing all of the evidence presented, the Court concludes, based on the preponderance of the evidence … that the State has failed to meet its 'obligation to manage and protect fisheries for the benefit of the general public' as required under the public-trust doctrine, failed to 'keep fisheries safe from injury, harm, or destruction for all time' as required under Article I, Section 38, and failed to 'protect the harvestable fish population 'for the benefit of the citizenry' as required under Article XIV, Section 5."
Collins also took direct aim at one of the state's central defensive arguments. The state argued that the plaintiffs had the burden of proof and could not carry that burden due to substantial gaps in crucial data. The judge was not persuaded. That the state's own data collection practices were insufficient to document the full scale of decline did not absolve the state of responsibility for creating the conditions of that decline. Collins concluded that "based on the preponderance of the evidence, including the evidence described in the Court's extensive findings, … the Court concludes that the State has breached its obligations under the public-trust doctrine, Article I, Section 38 of the North Carolina Constitution, and Article XIV, Section 5 of the North Carolina Constitution."
The Practices at the Center of the Controversy
Shrimp Trawling and the Bycatch Problem
At the heart of the conservation argument is shrimp trawling — a method of harvesting that drags heavy nets along the seafloor and captures everything in their path. The plaintiffs placed particular blame on shrimp trawling, arguing that trawl nets unintentionally catch large numbers of juvenile finfish as bycatch. When those juvenile fish are killed before they can reproduce, the damage compounds across generations of fish populations.
The complaint chronicles the staggering bycatch resulting from the state allowing the use of unattended gillnets and trawling in North Carolina estuarine waters heavily populated with juvenile fish — two practices that all other southeastern states have banned or severely curtailed because of the extraordinary amount of waste they generate. That final detail is critical: North Carolina was not simply managing a difficult situation differently from its neighbors. It was allowing practices that neighboring states had already determined to be incompatible with responsible fisheries management.
The 1997 Reform Act That Never Delivered
North Carolina is not without a legislative history on this subject. The state passed the Fisheries Reform Act in 1997, promising to rebuild its coastal fisheries. It hasn't kept that promise. In fact, things have gotten worse. The Act was supposed to impose science-based management that would rebuild depleted stocks and prevent further overfishing. Instead, it gave way to the same commercial pressures that had driven the decline in the first place.
Both the state constitution and the 1997 Fisheries Reform Act bound North Carolina to rebuild any fishing stocks that get depleted, which led the state to get involved in managing several commercially and recreationally important species, including flounder, shrimp, blue crab, and striped bass. But getting involved and actually managing for long-term sustainability turned out to be two very different things. What the evidence showed in court was a pattern of regulation that repeatedly bent to short-term commercial interests at the expense of the resource itself.
The lawsuit argues the state hasn't just failed to manage these shared resources — it has actively worked against science-based reforms, shielded destructive commercial practices from accountability, and allowed a small number of operators to exploit resources that belong to everyone. That allegation — that regulators actively ran interference for the industry rather than the public — is the kind of institutional failure that erodes trust not just in one agency but in the concept of public resource management broadly.
What Comes Next: The Remedy Phase
Finding that North Carolina violated its constitutional duties is a significant ruling — but it is not the end of the litigation. The question of what happens now moves into what courts call the remedy phase. Collins has given the parties 45 days to prepare a report to address the remedy phase of the case challenging state fisheries policies. That report will set the stage for what could be the most consequential part of the entire proceeding: a court order that actually forces the state to change how it manages its waters.
The plaintiffs made clear from the beginning what they were seeking. The plaintiffs asked the court for two things: a legal declaration that the state violated its constitutional obligations to manage public trust fisheries resources, and a permanent injunction requiring the state to take specific, enforceable corrective action. The declaration has now been delivered. The injunction is next.
Officials say that if the court finds that the state violated its duty to protect its fisheries and responsibilities to the public, any changes could dramatically change the face of North Carolina's fishing industry and potentially heap more economic pressures onto commercial fishermen, many of whom are already struggling financially. That tension — between the need to restore fish populations and the livelihoods of people who depend on the current system — will define the remedy negotiations ahead.
Recreational fishermen also could get caught up in any actions taken by the state to meet the court's orders, such as moves to close or further limit struggling but popular fisheries, like flounder. In other words, the ruling is not a clean win for any single constituency. Anyone who fishes North Carolina waters — commercial or recreational — will feel the effects of what comes next.
The Broader Significance: Public Trust Doctrine and the Future of Fisheries Law
A Constitutional Question Larger Than One State
This case was always about more than fish. At its core, it is about whether citizens can hold their state government legally accountable for failing to steward natural resources held in public trust. The plaintiffs contended that as a result of these and other failures to properly manage coastal fisheries, the state violated the North Carolina Constitution and the public trust doctrine, a legal doctrine under which the state holds certain natural resources in trust for its current and future citizens.
The public trust doctrine is ancient — its roots run through English common law back to Roman times. The idea is that certain resources, by their nature, belong to the public and cannot be alienated to private interests. Courts across American history have applied it to navigable waterways, beaches, and fisheries. But applying it to compel affirmative government action — to force a state not just to refrain from harming a resource but to actively rebuild it — is less settled territory. Judge Collins' ruling is a significant step in that direction.
What Other States Are Watching
Fisheries managers and conservation attorneys in other coastal states are paying close attention. North Carolina's fight is not unique in its underlying problem — overfishing, bycatch, and regulatory capture are documented realities across Gulf Coast and Atlantic states — but it may be unique in producing a court ruling that assigns constitutional liability. If a remedy phase produces concrete, enforceable management reforms, it could become a template for similar legal challenges in states where the same dynamics are at play.
The decision could eventually lead to new restrictions on commercial fishing not just in North Carolina, but wherever lawyers and conservationists are watching to see what remedies a court is willing to impose. The legal theory, if validated through the remedy phase, gives citizen coalitions a powerful tool that has previously been unavailable to them.
The Role of Citizen Coalitions
Other conservation organizations, including the North Carolina Wildlife Federation, have supported the CCA's claims. The breadth of the coalition that brought this case — recreational fishermen, conservation groups, former regulators — reflects a growing recognition that the traditional divide between sport fishing and conservation advocacy has largely dissolved. The people most invested in the long-term health of a fishery are, almost by definition, the people who fish it recreationally and who depend on its ecological integrity rather than its short-term yield.
Tim Gestwicki, chief executive officer of the North Carolina Wildlife Federation, captured this alignment well in an earlier stage of the litigation, saying he was "pleased that the Court reached the correct result, which reflects the basic, time-honored principle that the State is responsible for protecting our public trust resources."
The Waters Themselves: What's Actually Been Lost
Behind the legal arguments and constitutional provisions are real places and real fish. The Albemarle-Pamlico estuary system — the largest in the eastern United States — feeds the inshore fisheries that have defined coastal North Carolina for centuries. Spot, croaker, weakfish, flounder, striped bass, blue crab, and shrimp have all structured the region's economy and its identity. North Carolina's most important coastal fisheries haven't just declined — they've collapsed. The data shows how much some fish populations, including spot, croaker, and weakfish, have declined over the past 30 years.
For the recreational angler, these numbers translate directly into experience: fewer fish in the water, shorter seasons, smaller size limits, more regulations with less result. For the charter captain, they mean declining bookings and clients who drive past North Carolina to fish Virginia or South Carolina. For the waterman who has pulled a living from these sounds for decades, they mean an industry in structural retreat. The ruling does not reverse any of that. But it does, for the first time, place legal responsibility for that decline where the evidence says it belongs.
What This Means for Anglers Going Forward
The most immediate practical question for anyone who fishes North Carolina waters is what a remedy order might actually require. Possibilities include restrictions or bans on shrimp trawling in estuarine waters during critical juvenile fish periods, reforms to the gillnet fishery, hard catch limits enforced with real consequences, and robust data collection requirements to close the monitoring gaps the state used as a defense. Any of these reforms will face industry opposition and political resistance. But they will now be pursued under court supervision rather than through a regulatory process that has demonstrably failed for nearly three decades.
Any changes could dramatically change the face of North Carolina's fishing industry — and that is precisely the point. The fish populations in North Carolina's coastal waters did not collapse because of bad weather or natural cycles. They collapsed because of choices made by the people and agencies responsible for managing them. Judge Collins' ruling says so plainly. The remedy phase will determine whether this legal landmark translates into the kind of on-the-water change that every angler who has watched the fish disappear has been waiting for.
North Carolina now stands at a genuine crossroads. The court has spoken. The next move belongs to the state — and to the fishermen, commercial and recreational alike, who will live with whatever comes next in waters that, if the promise of 1997 had ever been kept, should still be full of fish.
