Judge upholds no-call list
The Attorney General’s office has released a statement titled, “Indiana Attorney General Steve Carter announces another legal victory for Indiana’s Do Not Call Law.” An Indianapolis Star article also reports the recent news:
A federal judge has ruled in favor of the state in a 3-year-old lawsuit by nonprofit groups challenging Indiana’s popular “no-call” list.
U.S. District Court Judge Sarah Evans Barker issued a verdict without trial in favor of Indiana Attorney General Steve Carter, who defended the list.
In a 36-page opinion dated Sept. 6 and issued late Wednesday, Barker said the law is “content-neutral” and does not violate the First Amendment.
The National Coalition of Prayer, Indiana Association of Chiefs of Police, and the Kentucky-Indiana Chapter of Paralyzed Veterans of America filed the lawsuit three years ago arguing that the law violated the United States Constitution and restricted the right to free speech. (The Indiana Troopers Association was an original plaintiff; however, it withdrew its support of the lawsuit in 2004.)
In 2002, Vanderburgh Circuit Court Judge Carl Heldt ruled the law constitutional after a challenge was raised by Steve Martin and Associates, a group selling Kirby Vacuum cleaners. Judge Sarah Evans Barker for the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana states in her ruling that “The Act, in targeting the unwelcome inundation of calls by professional telemarketers into private residences which the residents themselves have deemed intrusive, constitutes a valid content-neutral government regulation on speech.” Barker concludes, ” … The Indiana Telephone Privacy Act is a constitutionally-valid, content-neutral, time, place, and manner restriction on speech.”
The AG has created a website with a slew of information and documents relating to the dispute.
