Should impact political robocalls elsewhere, depending on state laws
The Supreme Court, by not hearing an appeal, upheld a North Dakota law banning robocalls by telemarketers — and others, such as political advocacy groups.
The Supreme Court turned away an appeal today from a northern Virginia political-polling firm that had sought to challenge a North Dakota law that bars telemarketers from making prerecorded interstate calls to that state's residents.
The North Dakota Do-Not-Call law says callers cannot use robo-call machines unless a live operator first obtains the subscriber's consent before a prerecorded message is delivered.
FreeEats.com, the company filing to overthrow the North Dakota law, is also the company behind “Swift Boater” robocalls in Indiana.
Indiana has a law similar to North Dakota’s, and FreeEats recently took it into federal court. A summary judgment in the Indiana case should result, I would think unless the Indiana law has any major differences from North Dakota’s.
Hopefully, this ruling should cut down on such nonsense in general; I hope it inspires states that currently do not have no-robocall laws to adopt them.
