Critical Hearing re 2257 in Philadelphia, November 26
 

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"On Nov. 26, at 9:30 in the morning, two very bright lawyers will square off before U.S. District Judge Michael M. Baylson in a high-rise courthouse in Philadelphia to conduct a hearing about whether the Free Speech Coalition's constitutional objections to 18 U.S.C. § 2257 inspections, based on the Fourth Amendment's prohibitions against unreasonable searches and seizures, can go forward - or whether those allegations - and this set of arguments about the 2257 scheme's ultimate constitutionality - will be dismissed."

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"Nanavaty goes on to swear that the inspection team was disbanded that very day, its two agents reassigned, its four to eight contract inspectors terminated, and its funding cut off; his statement says that from that date forward until the present, no funds have been made available to the FBI to conduct any 2257 Inspections and there is no funding now to conduct Inspections.

The government argues now that because no inspections can be called imminent at the present time, and because any rules of engagement used in the past are so old that they would have to be re-written in light of intervening changes in the statute and the regulations, the court could not rationally pass on what it describes as the way-too-speculative prospect of further inspections. It claims that a request for an injunction is "unripe" because their actual execution is not possible anytime soon, essentially arguing that there is no palpable threat that the Inspection provisions will take place.

This is a most-curious argument in my judgment, especially troubling because it arises purely and exclusively from choices made at the defendant Department of Justice, decisions which can evaporate at any time and without notice to anyone and result in the resumption of inspections without the opportunity to litigate the important constitutional arguments concerning Inspections in advance. It is an argument suggesting that because DOJ has unilaterally decided not to enforce a statute and a mandate entrusted to it by Congress, whose purposes it has described in several federal courts as a "compelling" interest in protecting children, and while it vigorously defends the validity of the statute by alleging its necessity, the means of enforcement prescribed in statute cannot be reviewed by the courts as a result of its own ephemeral administrative and budgetary decisions."

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... lol, sneaky fuckers...