Sounds like great news coming out of CA, congrats to CHC and everyone that worked on this.

Something I received earlier from AFC...

"California Fish and Wildlife attorney confirms that unannounced inspections of falconers’ property are in violation of 4th Amendment and California Constitution.

California falconry regulations are up for a revision in order to iron out some of the issues that were not worked out in time to meet the federal deadline during the last revision. In the last several months there has been substantial concern expressed by California falconers that the residential administrative searches of birds, facilities and paperwork is a violation of federal law as shown in the AFC YouTube video production revealing the assault on the 4th Amendment. The debate was at times contentious amongst falconers, some feeling that since they have nothing to hide the regulation is a bona fide part of wildlife management; others do not like the regulation but are of the belief that the regulation is the law, therefore they have no choice but to submit; while others feel that bird ownership is not sufficient justification to surrender 4th Amendment protection from having one’s property and papers searched at home when there is no compelling public interest at stake such as health, safety or security, which are typically the benchmarks for justification of such intrusion.

In an attempt to resolve this debate in early February 2016, California Hawking Club (CHC) President Glenn Stewart asked attorney and CHC member Ryan English to prepare a legal opinion brief of residential searches of falconers to be submitted to an upcoming meeting with California Fish & Wildlife (CF&W) Chief of Law Enforcement. Having viewed the recent AFC Assault on the 4th Amendment video, English requested the research and analysis conducted by the AFC in order to assist in the writing of the CHC opinion brief. The paper was completed and submitted by Glenn Stewart to California Fish & Wildlife law enforcement Chief who then forwarded it to their legal department.

It came as a pleasant surprise to hear that the CF&W attorney for law enforcement phoned Mr. English last week to say that he absolutely agreed with the analysis provided in the opinion letter. The call was friendly and he stated that his advice to the Chief of the division was they can't perform the inspections. He also said that the Fish & Game Commission has just recently been assigned their own lawyer this week and that it would be best for English to contact him once he is settled in. In closing he said the regulations are going back to the Commission soon so it would be an appropriate time to address the same in official objections.

AFC is delighted that we were able to provide some assistance to CHC in such an important matter. We will repost the legal opinion paper after it has been published in the CHC newsletter. Once that is done AFC Directors should make this information available to state clubs in their region so that they can use this as a model if they so chose.

We applaud the efforts of California Hawking Club in this ground breaking endeavor. As responsible citizens it is incumbent upon us to remain watchful and ensure that the rule of law is adhered to by all, most importantly by government officials, otherwise law becomes meaningless.
Troy Morris
AFC President"