Court Overrules Ban on Some Tuna Imports : Environment: Embargo originally applied to 20 nations with fleets that killed dolphins.

A federal appeals court Thursday overruled a ban on U.S. imports of tuna from four nations that bought tuna from countries with fleets that killed dolphins.

The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals did not address the question of whether the embargo was required under a U.S. dolphin protection law, but said an environmental group had filed the suit in the wrong court in 1988.

The embargo, ordered in 1992, originally applied to 20 nations, including such major exporters as Thailand, but now covers only Costa Rica, Spain, Italy and Japan.

None of those four previously sold significant amounts of tuna in the United States, said David Phillips, executive director of Earth Island Institute, which filed the suit.

The trade ban was sought under provisions of the Marine Mammal Protection Act that limit U.S. imports of tuna from nations whose tuna fleets kill dolphins. Dolphins swim above yellowfin tuna in the eastern tropical Pacific and large numbers of them have drowned when caught in tuna nets.

One part of the law prohibits importing tuna from any nation whose dolphin-killing exceeds a standard set by the U.S. government. The two nations now covered by that law are Mexico and Venezuela. Chief U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson ordered an embargo against them in 1990.

That embargo, a sensitive subject in U.S.-Mexico relations, was not discussed in Thursday’s ruling, leaving its status uncertain. The Bush Administration’s unsuccessful appeal of Henderson’s 1990 order did not challenge the judge’s authority to hear the case.

The legal basis of that embargo will be strengthened in June when amendments to the Endangered Species Act take effect, said Brian Gorman of the National Marine Fisheries Service. The amendments will prohibit the sale in the United States of “any tuna that has not been certified dolphin-safe.”