CHD v FCC Hearing Live-Stream on January 25, 2021

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US Court of Appeals, DC Circuit Court, Will Hear Oral Arguments on January 25, 2021

Hi, All, Exciting news! On November 20, 2020, the US Court of Appeals of the DC Circuit granted the request for oral arguments and scheduled the hearing in our case for January 25, 2021 at 9:30 am.

Likely, a few other cases will be scheduled for the same day and time and therefore, the exact time our hearing will start is unknown.

Due to Covid, the hearing will not be in person but via video conferencing and will be live-streamed. 

The Court ordered that only one attorney will be able to speak for all the Petitioners, and it was a joint decision by CHD, EHT and EHT’s attorney, Ed Meyers, that CHD’s attorney, Scott McCollough will give the argument.  

The Oral Arguments will be by video but only the judges and the attorneys who are presenting will be part of the zoom. Sadly, the rest of us will only have audio access. 

There are 2 ways to listen in:

1. Via the Court’s website: 
https://www.cadc.uscourts.gov/internet/home.nsf/content/Oral+Arguments

2. Via YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/c/USCourtsCADC/featured

It has been a long road, 13 months exactly since we started to work on this case and so many people both from the Children’s Health Defense and from the Environmental Health Trust and Consumers for Safe Cell Phones have put tremendous effort into this. 

We just posted an article on The Defender:  11,000 Pages of Evidence Filed in Landmark 5G Case Against the FCC, Hearing Set for Jan. 25 

Most recently, we filed the evidence in our case, called the “Joint Appendix” and it is 11,000 pages total. The Joint Appendix contains 440 documents. The table of contents alone is 54 pages. Because of the sheer volume of evidence, it had to be divided into 27 volumes. The court requires seven sets of the Joint Appendix, and therefore, 189 binders each containing approximately 500 pages were shipped to the court. The printing and shipping costs for the Joint Appendix amounted to more than $15,000.

Preparing the Joint Appendix was a 3 week project of 5 people working full time. It was almost as intense as writing the briefs. Preparing the Joint Appendix cost us $35,000. Links to each volume of the Joint Appendix are available at the article linked above.

It is important to note that in this type of case we are allowed to use only evidence that was filed in the docket. To prepare the th briefs in the case we had to go through thousands of submissions and read even more documents and then of course, we had to make our arguments based on the evidence in the docket– not based on the best evidence that exists, which was challenging at times. 

Please click here and scroll down to see EHT’s and CHD’s joint Press Release. Please send it to journalists you may know

The Children’s Health Defense has invested massive financial resources in this case and we hope that you can support our effort and help us cover these costs so we would be able to initiate additional cases and projects.

Please be aware that this year, thanks to the CARES Act favorable tax deductions apply to donations. People who choose “standard deduction” will be able to deduct cash donations up to $300 in addition to the standard deduction. This year people who choose “itemized deduction, will be able to deduct donations up to 100% of their adjusted gross income (instead of 60%). 

Good Luck to Us All!

Dafna Tachover