Opinion ID: 3011785
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Hardship to Parties

Text: The essence of Loy's claim is that not knowing the scope of the pornography proscription is, in itself, a hardship. He argues that because of the vagueness, he will not know what he can and cannot view. If, as the gover nment argues, he must wait until he is arrested to lear n whether or not he has violated the condition, the hardship to him is apparent. As we held in Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfare v. United States Department of Health & Human Services , 101 F.3d 939 (3d Cir. 1996), the fact that a party may be forced to alter his behavior so as to avoid penalties under a potentially illegal regulation is, in itself, a hardship. In so doing, we opined that an argument to the contrary would be like saying that an increase in the inter est rate charged for late payments on a credit card pr esents no hardship to the customer because the customer has not yet made a delayed payment under the new and higher interest rate. We disagree with that premise. Instead, we think it more likely that the customer will have to change his behavior at the time he is infor med of the rate hike in order to avoid the risk of having to pay the higher interest rate and hence will suf fer a direct hardship at the time of the rate hike. The fact that the new, higher interest rate is a contingent future charge does not preclude it from causing harm to the party at the time it is put into place. Id. at 946. In addition, the government's blanket r equirement that Loy face revocation proceedings befor e being permitted to challenge his conditions of release is at odds with the Supreme Court's pronouncement in Stef fel v. Thompson, 415 U.S. 452 (1974), where the Court stated that it is not necessary that petitioner first expose himself to actual arrest or prosecution to be entitled to challenge a statute that he claims deters the exercise of his constitutional rights. Id. at 459.