Does SOX apply to grouper?

In 2007, Captain John L. Yates of the fishing vessel, Miss Katie, was caught with 72 undersized red grouper. After being ordered to bring the fish ashore by a Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation officer, Captain Yates dumped the fish back into the Gulf of Mexico. He was convicted of violating the Sarbanes–Oxley Act, also know as SOX, which was intended to stop accounting fraud.  At the end of last month, the US Supreme Court was called to rule on whether SOX also applied to fish.  In a  narrow vote, they decided that it does not.

Following the Enron and Worldcom corporate accounting scandals, in 2002 the US Senate passed the “Public Company Accounting Reform and Investor Protection Act” and “Corporate and Auditing Accountability and Responsibility Act” as it was known in the House of Representatives. The bill was more commonly called Sarbanes–Oxley, or SOX.  The purpose of the bill was to increase corporate accountability. One provision of the bill imposes a maximum 20 year prison sentence for the destruction of “any record, document or tangible object” in order to obstruct an investigation.

The question before the Supreme Court was whether the intent of the law regarding “tangible objects” applied to red grouper. The five to four ruling inspired colorful speech from the bench. Ruth Bader Ginsberg speaking of the majority asked, “Fish one may fry, but may one falsify, or make a false entry in the sea dwelling creatures?” In the written opinion, she also noted, “Ordinarily, a word’s usage accords with its dictionary definition. In law as in life, however, the same words, placed in different contexts, sometimes mean different things.”

Justice Kagan, for the minority wrote, “A fish is, of course, a discrete thing that possesses physical form,”citing Dr. Seuss’ book “One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish.”

At least thus far, in American jurisprudence, a fish is still just a fish.