Preliminary decision on the South Atlantic red snapper exempted fishing permits lawsuit in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
On May 21, 2026, the United States District Court for the District of Columbia issued an order granting the plaintiffs\u2019 motion for a preliminary injunction, halting activities under the exempted fishing permits (EFPs) that authorized the 2026 state recreational red snapper seasons in the South Atlantic.\u00a0 The South Atlantic EFPs for Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina are no longer in effect until further order from the Court, and the recreational harvest of red snapper in the South Atlantic remains closed.\u00a0<\/p>\n
All recreational fishing under these South Atlantic EFPs is not authorized, including tomorrow\u2019s start date of May 22, 2026, for Florida\u2019s recreational red snapper season.\u00a0 Contact your state agency for further details.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
The ruling does not affect the South Atlantic red snapper commercial season that NOAA Fisheries will announce at a later date.\u00a0 NOAA Fisheries will announce if there will be a 2026 federal recreational season for red snapper in the South Atlantic.<\/p>\n
Sign Up for Text Message Alerts – Find Out About Immediate Openings and Closures<\/p>\n
NOAA’s Text Message Alert Program allows you to receive important fishery-related alerts via text message (SMS).\u00a0 Standard message & data rates may apply. You may opt-out at any time. Comments sent by any other method (such as postal mail), to any other address or individual, or received after the end of the comment period, may not be considered.<\/p>\n
Text alerts you may receive include:<\/p>\n
Immediate fishery openings and closuresAny significant changes to fishing regulations that happen quickly<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Sign up for one or more of the following groups:<\/p>\n
Gulf Recreational Fisheries\u00a0Related AlertsText GULFRECFISH to 888777Gulf Commercial Fisheries Related AlertsText GULFCOMMFISH to 888777South Atlantic Recreational Fisheries Related AlertsText SATLRECFISH to 888777South Atlantic Commercial Fisheries Related AlertsText SATLCOMMFISH to 888777Caribbean Fisheries Related Alerts<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Preliminary decision on the South Atlantic red snapper exempted fishing permits lawsuit in the United States District Court…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":280471,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29],"class_list":["post-280470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=280470"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280470\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/280471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=280470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=280470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=280470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}