Today at 11:30 AM in Waco, Texas, the Texas Blockchain Council and Riot Platforms, Inc. asked Federal District Judge Alan Albright to issue a temporary restraining order preventing the EIA from carrying out the “emergency” survey.
At that hearing, government lawyers filed a voluntary declaration by EIA Director DeCarolis, offering a four-week moratorium and collection. Realizing that the government's offer here was nothing more than an empty promise without some sort of enforcement mechanism, Judge Albright directed the government to work with plaintiffs to draft a negotiated order that would fully commit the government to:
- Complete the survey for the agreed upon four-week period;
- Provide notice to anyone who has not yet complied that they do not need to comply now; And
- Provide assurance that any information received to date, or received in the meantime, will be quarantined and will not be used by the agency.
Also, this application will be national in scope, so every miner in the United States is covered.
If the government cannot reach an agreement by 3pm central time today, the judge has indicated that he will issue a temporary restraining order with the same effect as above, but will expedite the timeline for a permanent injunction hearing.
We'll know more in a few hours when the final order is entered, but for now at least it appears that the EIA has stopped collecting (allegedly illegal) “emergency” data.
Here is a link to the case files.
to update: The Department of Environmental Impact Assessment has agreed to temporarily suspend its survey of mining energy use.
This is a guest post by Colin Crossman. The opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.
