The opinion, however launched a series of fishy references from justices on both sides of the case.
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At issue was whether undersized fish — thrown overboard during a wildlife and fisheries investigation — could be covered as a “record, document or tangible object” under a section of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. Yates was prosecuted under the law and served a 30-day sentence with supervised release.
“Fish one may fry,” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said, but she concluded that Captain John Yates did not violated the law by “dumping six dozen small-sized grouper back into the sea.”
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“Whether the item is a fisherman’s ledger, or an undersized fish, throwing it overboard has the identical effect on the administration of justice,” Kagan said.
Lawyer Bradley Bondi filed a brief in support of Yates for the Cato Institute and praised the ruling.
“The court realized its fishy to use a financial fraud statute, carrying up to 20 years in prison, to prosecute a commercial fisherman who otherwise would have been subject at most to a civil crime and the temporary loss of his fishing license,” he said.
