SALT LAKE CITY, UT – The Free Speech Coalition (FSC) filed a motion yesterday in U.S. District Court in Utah seeking a preliminary injunction to enjoin enforcement of Utah’s Child Protection Registry (CPR).The CPR was designed by the Utah legislature to allow parents, teachers, and others to submit and register addresses to which minors have access, and to prohibit emails from being sent from anywhere in the world to those addresses that advertise “harmful matter,” and products or services minors cannot purchase.
Email marketers can pay a private company, Unspam, to “scrub” their lists at a cost of 1/2 cent for every name on their list or use the emailing services of one of a handful of “approved Email Service Providers” (ESPs).
In its 35-page motion, the FSC argues that Utah’s CPR is “preempted by the federal CAN-SPAM Act and that it violates the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution, the First Amendment of the Constitution, and Article I, Section 15, of the Utah Constitution,” according to a press release posted to the FSC website – www.freespeechcoalition.com.
According to the FSC release, its Utah litigation team “identified eight separate First Amendment flaws in the Utah law,” including that the CPR “constitutes an impermissible prior restraint” on free speech, “imposes an unconstitutional burden on protected expression,” and “suffers from impermissible vagueness fatal in the First Amendment context.”
The FSC said its attorneys are asking the court to grant a preliminary injunction enjoining the defendants from enforcing any of the provisions contained in the Utah CPR Act.
“The effort to enjoin Utah’s CPR is an important part of FSC’s litigation strategy to challenge oppressive statutes which not only burden lawful expression and commerce, but in this case actually expose minors to unwanted intrusion by creating a convenient registry which the Federal Trade Commission believes can be easily hacked,” FSC Board Chair Jeffrey Douglas stated in the press release.
The FSC has plenty of other support for its motion; those backing the FSC’s injunction request include the American Advertising Federation, the American Association of Advertising Agencies, the Association of National Advertisers, Inc., the Email Service Provider Coalition, Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the Center for Democracy and Technology
As reported by YNOT in January, the Federal Trade Commission doesn’t support the Utah CPR, either. In December, the FTC issued a statement expressing concern that such registries pose “serious security and privacy risks.”
“It’s rare that we find ourselves in agreement with the federal government,” FSC’s Douglas told YNOT in January, “but in this instance, we’re seeing things eye-to-eye.”
