But on Tuesday’s appeal, the judges argued that they are obliged to “liberally” interpret CESA’s terms in order to make sure it can be effective.
“Although the term fish is colloquially and commonly understood to refer to aquatic species,” the judges said, legislative jargon in this case could be justified in expanding the definition to fish.
Sure. If beavers are fish, why not bees?
The Old Testament classifies bats as birds, right? And, in Moby Dick, the narrator made the case that whales are fish.
Not sure why they went with fish, but from your cite:
Although four different bee species were classified as endangered in 2018, land invertebrates are not explicitly protected under the state’s Endangered Species Act (CESA), which protects endangered “native species or subspecies of a bird, mammal, fish, amphibian, reptile, or plant.”
So the argument that the legislative intent was probably to include insects as well isn’t as absurd as it might seem at first.
In addition, “invertebrate” was already defined elsewhere as being a “fish” without specifying that it only referred to marine invertebrates, and furthermore, legislators had assumed that this pertained to bees and thus did not think they needed to include terrestrial invertebrates in the law. So the intent was clearly to protect bees.
From the ruling, the California legislature actually wrote a law that says, “‘[f]ish’ means a wild fish, mollusk, crustacean, invertebrate, amphibian, or part, spawn, or ovum of any of those animals.”
It sure sounds like bumblebees are fish in California.
Sounds like a case of “winning the battle but losing the war.” It’s not hard to think of many ways that this “I’ll put XYZ under category ABC any time it suits my purposes” precedent could backfire.
It sounds like the judge was clearly interpreting the law as it was written. The Legislature should have had a biologist (or, like, someone who passed high school biology) look over that law before they passed it, but this doesn’t seem like a case of outcome-driven judicial activism.
Did you read the post directly above yours?
Well, of course bees are fish. Duh!
There is a good joke here, but I ain’t making it!
It’s got to be pretty bad if you’re having second thoughts about it, Gatopescado! 
Well, capybaras (and beavers) count as fish too… at least, if you’re Catholic. I don’t know if the Pope has weighed in on our little buzzy friends.
Yeah, but both those make sense visually.
This is incorrect.
The actual decision says repeatedly that they are interpreting the word fish “liberally” (as a “term of art”) because this would be consistent with “the legislature’s purpose at the time of the enactment”.
I don’t care enough to research it, but if LHoD’s quote in post 6 is accurate, the law explicitly defines invertebrates (as well as several other things that aren’t fish) as being fish. So it’s hard to see what other conclusion the judges could have come to. Was there a dissent?
So anyway, everyone is obviously keen to know if you are related to Bee.Fish?
And Neil Shubin must be happy with all this publicity for the general fishiness of all things.
Indeed. A “term of art” doesn’t mean “artistic license.” It means it’s a term defined idiosyncratically for a particular purpose.
As for the quote, I pulled it directly from page 4 of the decision, in case anyone wants to check my work :).
Well, if ketchup can be a vegetable…
I’m a Thing Bee, baby
Buzzin’ all around your hive-mind…