Do-Not-Call Listing Remains Up in Air After Day of Twists

Thursday, September 25, 2003

By Sheryl Gay Stolberg

with Matt Richtel

New York Times Writers

"Congress can't trump the Constitution," said Robert Corn-Revere, a lawyer for the American Teleservices Association, a trade group that brought the lawsuit in Denver. "If rules and laws are unconstitutional, they cannot be enforced."

WASHINGTON -- NYT
In a swift display of bipartisan unity, Congress overwhelmingly passed legislation today aimed at allowing a national do-not-call registry against unwanted telemarketing to take effect next week as planned. But hours after the vote, which effectively rendered moot a federal judge's injunction against the registry, a second judge declared the program a violation of free speech.

The new ruling was the latest twist in a confusing off-again-on-again drama involving the federal effort to prevent unwanted telephone solicitation. Unless it is overturned by a higher court, the latest judicial decision would block the government from going ahead on schedule with the hugely popular federal program; almost 50 million American households have signed up for the list.

Today's Congressional measure was drafted in haste on Wednesday after lawmakers learned of the first decision, issued by a federal judge in Oklahoma who ruled on the fairly narrow grounds that the registry could not go forward because Congress had not specifically authorized the right agency to run it.

The bill passed 95 to 0 in the Senate and 412 to 8 in the House. "Perhaps we should call this bill the `This Time We Really Mean It Act,' " declared Representative Billy Tauzin, the Louisiana Republican and chief House sponsor of the bill, "to cure any misunderstanding in the judicial branch."

President Bush said he would sign the measure. It gives the Federal Trade Commission the power to create and enforce the do-not-call list, something that lawmakers thought they had already done but that the judge, Lee R. West, said they had not.

The second ruling, issued today by Judge Edward W. Nottingham of Federal District Court in Denver, threw a more effective obstacle in the way of the list on the ground that it discriminates against for-profit businesses; the registry program still allows political and charitable solicitation calls to be made. Judge Nottingham ruled that by exempting the nonprofit solicitors from the registry, the F.T.C. "has imposed a content-based limitation on what the consumer may ban from his home."
(More: NYTimes.com Business)
2003 © The New York Times Company.

Earlier BBS comments on the topic:

* Congress Votes for Do-Not-Call Registry

Dan