An Arizona appeals court has ruled a 1991 federal law blocking autodialers from calling cell phones applies to unsolicited ads sent as text messages.
An Arizona court has ruled that the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991, which bans junk faxes and unsolicited telemarketing calls to cell phones, also applies to unsolicited text message advertisements sent to cell phone users.
The unanimous ruling by a three-judge panel upholds a lower court ruling in favor or Rodney Joffe, who sued Acacia Mortgage Company after the company repeatedly sent unsolicited messages to his cell phone asking if he was interested in a mortgage. The messages were part of a 2001 advertising campaign by the company, which deliberately sent the messages to at least 90,000 cell phone users by converting their AT&T Wireless phone numbers to email addresses (by appending "@att.net" to the end) and programming their computers to send the messages automatically.
In its ruling, the court found Congress wrote 1991′s Telephone Consumer Protection Act so it anticipated advances in automatic phone dialing technology, making the law applicable to text messages. "Even though Acacia used an attenuated method to dial a cell phone telephone number, it nevertheless did so," Judge Patricia K. Norris wrote for the panel. The court also ruled against Acacia’s contention it had a First Amendment right to send unsolicited text messages. "Congress found consumers and businesses were especially frustrated by these calls, viewing them as a nuisance, an invasion of privacy and a threat to interstate commerce," Norris wrote.
The ruling may represent the first case in the U.S. to find that unsolicited text messages to cell phones violate federal telemarketing laws. The ruling also creates an opportunity for Joffe to escalate the case to class action status on behalf of the 90,000 other cell phone users targeted by Acacia’s ad campaign.
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