(CBS NEWS) Washington — They can be pickled, smoked or used for bait, but on Wednesday, the silvery, skinny fish known as the herring will be the focus of a dispute that could end with the U.S. Supreme Court reeling in the ability of federal agencies to regulate the environment, health care and the workplace. Underpinning the legal fight is a 40-year-old decision that, if wiped away by the court's expanded conservative majority, could diminish the so-called administrative state, long a goal of the conservative legal movement. Known as "Chevron deference," after a landmark 1984 ruling involving the oil and gas giant, the longstanding doctrine requires courts to defer to an agency's reasonable interpretation of ambiguous laws passed by Congress. Critics of the framework argue it gives federal bureaucrats too much power in crafting regulations that affect major swaths of American life. On Wednesday, the court will hear a pair of challenges to a 2020 regulation that required fishermen in the Atlantic herring fishery to pay for monitors who collect data and oversee operations while they're at sea. The regulation Fishing vessels have taken federal observers on trips for decades. But under the program enacted by the National Marine Fisheries Service during the Trump administration, they had to foot the bill for monitoring, which cost more than $700 per day, according to government estimates. The agency implemented the regulation under a 1976 law. But to the fishermen, the government mandating they pay for at-sea monitors is like a town requiring residents to foot the bill for a police officer who rides in their cars and issues them speeding tickets, according to Meghan Lapp, the fisheries liaison for Seafreeze. The company operates two vessels, F/V Relentless and F/V Persistence, in the Atlantic herring fishery. "This is inherently a government function, and we have no problem with taking the observers as required by Congress," she said. "But Congress did not require us to pay for them, and that is a huge distinction." Seafreeze's style of fishing allows its vessels to remain at sea longer than others, typically 10 to 14 days, and they have the flexibility to target other species, like mackerel or squid, in addition to herring. But the regulation means that they may be on the hook for the federal monitor, even if they catch little to no herring. If they choose to leave the dock without a monitor and one is required, they can't fish for herring on that trip. "It can push us out of this fishery," she said. "We've done it by the law, sustainably, the whole nine yards. But we're basically getting financially excluded from this fishery unless we want to be paying for a herring program out of the proceeds of other species. This makes going herring fishing or having that option financially prohibitive." READ MORE: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/supreme-court-chevron-doctrine-herring-federal-agencies/