A group of falconers will have the chance to continue with their legal challenge to California state rules requiring them to surrender their constitutional rights against unannounced warrantless searches of their property by state agents as a condition of keeping their state falconry licenses.
The individual plaintiffs and the AFC had filed suit initially in 2018 in Sacramento federal court.
According to court documents, Peter Stavrianoudakis, Timmons and Ariyoshi have practiced falconry for decades. Stavrianoudakis and Timmons say they have been subjected to unannounced inspections or questioning by government agents in the past.
And the AFC, which has 100 members nationwide, said armed federal agents have conducted unannounced warrantless searches of the homes and property of two falconers in the state of Washington, and California state agents have similarly searched the property of two of its falconer members in recent years.
The lawsuit seeks a court order declaring the California Fish and Wildlife Department had overstepped the limits of their authority in forcing licensed falconers to submit to "unannounced warrantless inspections" at their property if they wished to renew their annual falconry licenses.
The lawsuit had also named the federal U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as defendants.
They are seeking a court order blocking federal and state agents from conducting similar inspections in the future.
According to court documents, the USFWS has largely delegated regulatory authority over falconry to the states. And in California, as a condition of their falconry permit, licensees are required to agree to submit to the warrantless inspections.
The legal challenge was initially tossed against all of the defendants by U.S. District Judge Jennifer L. Thurston, an appointee of President Joe Biden.
In that ruling, Thurston had agreed with the state and federal defendants that falconers did not have a case.
While the plaintiffs had presented evidence of past searches, Thurston said the plaintiffs can't sue "because they 'have never been subjected to the unannounced inspections pursuant to the challenged regulations.'”
The falconers then appealed, and found a more receptive audience at the Ninth Circuit, which ruled 2-1 in their favor.
The majority opinion was authored by Ninth Circuit Judge Danielle J. Forrest. Judge Salvador Mendoza Jr. concurred in the ruling.
Circuit Judge Sidney R. Thomas dissented.
In the majority opinion, Judge Forrest said the threat of unannounced warrantless inspections by the state was enough to back the falconers' claims that California's regulatory scheme violated their rights under the Fourth Amendment to be free from warrantless searches.
"The question presented here is whether simply agreeing to submit to those inspections, in the absence of an actual inspection ... amounts to the relinquishment of Fourth Amendment rights," Forrest wrote. "We conclude that it does.
"By successfully applying for a falconry license, the Falconers certify that they will forego a claim to Fourth Amendment protections. An inspection may not occur or, if it does, it may not violate the Fourth Amendment because it is reasonable.
"But the idea that the Falconers surrender nothing unless and until an unlawful inspection occurs - that California extracts a blanket waiver that is, in fact, entirely superfluous - defies logic. Rather, we take the regulation to mean what it says, and agreeing to unannounced, warrantless inspections without any consideration of the reasonableness of such inspections implicates Fourth Amendment rights."
The majority said the California regulation scheme runs afoul of the constitutional doctrine that government cannot force Americans to give up a constitutional right in exchange for some benefit. In this case, they said, the California regulation would force falconers to waive their Fourth Amendment rights in exchange for a state license.
So, they said, Judge Thurston was wrong to dismiss their claims against the state.
However, the appellate judges agreed the falconers had no standing to sue the federal Fish and Wildlife Service at this point, because the federal agency is not responsible for regulating their falconry practices.
In dissent, Judge Thomas said the majority carried the "unconstitutional conditions" doctrine too far.
Thomas said the "act of giving consent" for potentially unconstitutional searches is not necessarily, by itself, a violation of Fourth Amendment rights.
Likening California's falconry licensing regime to building inspections, Thomas said it is not clear that the requirement to submit to warrantless inspections actually amounts to any kind of Fourth Amendment violation at all.
Thomas said he believed the decision would open a "loophole" in federal legal doctrine that would threaten to undo decades of legal precedent in which courts have routinely held that people cannot sue the government for only threatening to violate people's constitutional rights.
"This expansion in constitutional standing under the Fourth Amendment will lead to dramatic expansion in meritless facial challenges to all kinds of regulations adopted to protect public health, welfare, and safety," Thomas said. "Allowing these kinds of Fourth Amendment claims to proceed with no allegation of an actual impending search 'will subject government at every level to inappropriate judicial scrutiny of its actions . . . .'”
The falconers' attorneys from the nonprofit legal advocacy organization, the Pacific Legal Foundation, called the ruling "good news for property rights, individual liberty and the sport of falconry."
“After years of litigation, Peter (Stavrianoudakis) and his co-plaintiffs will finally have their day in court,” PLF attorney Daniel Woislaw said in a statement.
"Peter and PLF will continue the fight in the district court, where they will argue that falconers, like other Americans, have a constitutional right against warrantless searches of their homes. The regulations they challenge treat falconers like criminals on parole rather than practitioners of an ancient recreational tradition.
"If the government wants to enter their homes, it will have to do it the constitutional way: with a warrant."