C & W Fish Co., Inc. v. Fox
United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit
931 F.2d 1556 (D.C. Cir. 1991)
William Fox (defendant), an administrator at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, approved a rule banning drift gillnets for catching a specific fish species; before joining the agency, Fox had chaired a commission that advocated for the ban and had written an article supporting it. Fishing industry groups (plaintiffs) challenged the rule, arguing Fox's prior public advocacy meant he had an unalterably closed mind and should have been disqualified from deciding the issue as an administrator; the trial court rejected this argument, and the groups appealed.
Whether an administrative rulemaker may be disqualified from deciding a policy question simply because the administrator previously and publicly expressed an opinion advocating for that same policy.