Three cases that likely lay the groundwork for a major privacy battle at the U.S. Supreme Court are pending before federal appeals courts, whose judges are taking their time announcing whether they believe the dragnet collection of Americans' phone records is legal.

It’s been more than five months since the American Civil Liberties Union argued against the National Security Agency program in New York, three months since legal activist Larry Klayman defended his thus far unprecedented preliminary injunction win in Washington, D.C., and two months since Idaho nurse Anna Smith’s case was heard by appeals judges in Seattle.

At the district court level, judges handed down decisions about a month after oral arguments in the cases.

It’s unclear what accounts for the delay. It’s possible judges are meticulously crafting opinions that are likely to receive wide coverage, or that members of the three-judge panels are clashing on the appropriate decision.

Attorneys involved in the cases understandably are reluctant to criticize the courts, but all express hope for speedy resolution of their fights against alleged violations of Americans’ Fourth Amendment rights.

“We’re disappointed the court isn’t moving more quickly because every day constitutional rights are violated is one day too much,” says Klayman. “It’s a preliminary injunction. By its very nature, it’s supposed to move quickly.”

The Freedom Watch founder, an attorney in the Reagan administration, says he believes judges want “to get it right” and that “three months is not unusual if they make a decision relatively soon.”

But, he adds, “I would urge the court not to take much more time.”

Attorney Peter Smith, who represented his wife before a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, also hopes for a decision soon. “Time is of the essence when a violation of the Constitution occurs every single day,” he says.

“This is not a case where the injury already happened and the court is deciding how to provide a remedy,” Smith says. “This is a case where every day there is a violation of the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution. Every day Anna suffers an irreparable injury.”

One of the ACLU’s lead attorneys on its case, Jameel Jaffer, declined to criticize the courts for the delay but says he, too, hopes judges will hand down decisions soon.

“Some of the cases raise difficult issues, but I’m hopeful that we’ll start to see decisions from some of the appeals courts very soon,” Jaffer says.

“The courts have a crucial role to play in articulating the constitutional limits on the government’s surveillance powers, and the public and congressional debates should be informed by the courts’ decisions,” he says.

Though it’s difficult to accurately predict court decisions based on oral arguments, opponents of the mass surveillance program may have reason for optimism.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit, which heard the ACLU appeal on Sept. 2, was “chilly” to government arguments, Politico reported – particularly its dependence on Section 215 of the Patriot Act to seize phone company records and its reliance on the 1979 Supreme Court decision in Smith v. Maryland. That decision established the legal precedent that government attorneys say makes the collection constitutional, but privacy advocates say it is outdated and addressed vastly different circumstances.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit panel hearing Klayman’s case Nov. 4 included Judge David Sentelle, who in June wrote a decision that found cellphone location data is protected by the Fourth Amendment and that police need a warrant before acquiring it. The sentiment of that panel, however, was difficult to read, with each judge sounding at times skeptical of surveillance foes' arguments and at other times open-minded to striking down the NSA program.

Judges hearing the Smith appeal Dec. 8 included two veterans of cases against government surveillance and a member of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review, the appeals body above the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which secretly approved the phone program for years before whistleblower Edward Snowden exposed it in June 2013. That hearing was cordial and focused largely on whether Smith v. Maryland is applicable to the mass collection of similar records.

Luke Malek, a Republican state legislator in Idaho who’s worked on the Smith case, says there’s no cause for alarm over the delay.

“The courts are grappling with the fate of privacy and an understanding of the Fourth Amendment in the era of the smartphone," Malek says. "I am encouraged and hopeful that the time the courts are taking to rule is because there is a recognition that legal standards for privacy in regards to archaic telephonic technology renders any previous standard obsolete."

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"With the preservation of the Fourth Amendment in the balance," he adds, "they should take the time they need to get it right."