The Supreme Court Could Use the First Amendment to Unleash a Robocall Nightmare
Chief Justice John Roberts has made clear in speeches and in his end-of-year “state of the judiciary” message that he worries about public perceptions of the Supreme Court and of federal courts in general.
Today, advocates for “free speech” will offer a good way for the Court to become the least popular institution in America: by making it decide that Americans have to live with unsolicited, repeated prerecorded calls—so-called robocalls—to their cellphones.
That’s the opportunity presented by Barr v. American Association of Political Consultants, a First Amendment challenge to a federal law that forbids anyone from calling a cellphone to transmit a recorded message.
[Garrett Epps: A citizen’s guide to SCOTUS live]
If you own a cellphone, you likely receive unsolicited recorded calls every few days at least. Since I am among the older generation, mine tend to be either from “Nancy” telling me that I can get great new health insurance or from an “IRS agent” telling me that my Social Security number has been “suspended” and that “local law enforcement” will arrest me within hours if I don’t call back and give my bank-account details.
They are enough of a nuisance that I don’t answer my cellphone anymore if I don’t recognize the number. They are also forbidden under (TCPA), passed in 1991. But the plaintiffs in this case—a professional organization of political managers, strategists, and pollsters—are asking the Court for it to be otherwise, to invalidate the TCPA’s robocall prohibition. If they prevail, it will be open season on your cellphone, courtesy of your Supreme Court.
