A civil rights lawsuit has just been filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California. This suit seeks to vindicate the Fourth Amendment rights of the named plaintiffs and members of AFC to be free from unreasonable warrantless searches of their private homes, as well as their First Amendment rights to use their birds for expressive purposes for profit if they so choose.
The primary purpose of AFC is to protect the rights of falconers in their pursuit of practicing the art and sport of falconry. Several years ago, AFC was able to extract a concession from the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (FWS) that falconers do indeed have personal property rights in their domestic bred and wild taken raptors – this being settled law throughout the existence of the United States. Based on this truth, government officials have no justification or authority in searching (referred to as administrative inspections) the private property of falconers under color of law where there is no probable cause or warrant for a search. Yet state and federal officials assert they do have this authority even though they cannot cite from whence this authority is derived.
In addition, FWS denies falconers their 1st Amendment freedom of speech by asserting that the only activities falconers are allowed with their raptors are those which FWS expressly allows for. Given these violations of our constitutional rights, AFC took our grievances to attorneys with the PACIFIC LEGAL FOUNDATION (PLF) for review. They agreed that these were indeed blatant violations of rights guaranteed by the U.S. and state constitutions and agreed to take our case.