Friday, September 26, 2003
The fight contines
A federal judge in Denver ruled late yesterday that the government's effort to curb unsolicited telemarketing calls was unconstitutional, another blow to plans to implement a national do-not-call list next week.
The decision by U.S. District Judge Edward W. Nottingham was announced just minutes after Congress, in a rare display of speed and bipartisanship, voted to overturn an earlier federal judge's decision to nullify the list on different legal grounds.
Since late June, consumers have registered more than 50 million phone numbers on the Federal Trade Commission's anti-telemarketing list. Under the agency's plans, enforcement was slated to begin Oct. 1, with telemarketers risking an $11,000 fine each time they called a number on the list.
But Nottingham, ruling in favor of telemarketers who had challenged the registry, said it was unconstitutional on freedom-of-speech grounds because it would have allowed telemarketers for charitable organizations to continue to call numbers on the list even though commercial firms would be barred from doing so.
Please stop calling me . . .
posted by chris at 1:20 PM
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