Not Joking: Court Declares Bumblebees Are Legally ‘Fish’

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The verdict in the Sussmann case isn’t the only recent legal issue which people are scratching their heads over. In California, local news outlets are reporting that an appeals court “has ruled four species of bumblebees are legally fish.” Yes, you read that right. This isn’t Onion or Babylon Bee type satire, no matter how far out it may seem.

The definition of ‘fish’

Folks have speculated for quite some time that many of the high profile jurists in the California court system hitchhiked their way here from the other side of the galaxy.

When they heard about bees being declared fish, Douglas Adams fans started giggling “they must be those ‘12 foot Piranha Bees‘ our Golgafrincham ancestors were warned about.” They aren’t. This isn’t Science Fiction, either. It’s the result of a decision made in a court case under the California Endangered Species Act.

In 2019, a lawsuit was filed in a battle between large agricultural groups, like the almond and citrus growers, who were fighting tooth and nail with the California Fish and Game Commission over bumblebees. It’s important to note that strange and unusual things that don’t make any logical or scientific sense are perfectly acceptable to legislatures.

That means the courts need to take that into consideration, too, when deciding issues arising from the laws cooked up by politicians. A perfect example was when Congress declared in 2011 that “a slice of pizza will continue to qualify as a vegetable because it contains two tablespoons of tomato paste.

Four species of bumblebee are in dispute. The commission wants to call them endangered. Specifically they are “the Crotch, the Western, the Suckley Cuckoo, and the Franklin species.

In order to do that, the commission needs jurisdiction. Bees don’t happen to have a spine, so that makes them “invertebrates, therefore falling under CESA’s definition of fish.” The court agreed.

Statutorily delegated authority

By the time the appeals court got involved in the dispute, it came down to an issue of whether or not the Commission “exceeded its statutorily delegated authority” when it designated the four listed “as candidate species under consideration for listing as endangered species.

The growers thought calling bees “fish” simply to list them as endangered is preposterous. They were wrong.

The trial court sided with the farmers in 2020. Just because something is an invertebrate doesn’t meant it’s protected under CESA. The Fish and Game Commission had to remove bees from its list.

Not so fast, the appeals court said on Tuesday, May 31. Based on how the law is written, in California, strange as it seems, bees can be considered as fish for purposes of determining whether or not they are endangered.

We next consider whether the Commission’s authority is limited to listing only aquatic invertebrates,” They write. “The answer is, ‘no.‘ Although the term fish is colloquially and commonly understood to refer to aquatic species, the term of art employed by the Legislature in the definition of fish in section 45 is not so limited.

They admit it sounds fishy. “We acknowledge the scope of the definition is ambiguous but also recognize we are not interpreting the definition on a blank slate.

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