A federal judge in Utah Monday dismissed a lawsuit against the state’s so-called child protection do-not-e-mail registry brought by the Free Speech Coalition.
The pornography trade group sued Utah in 2005, claiming the state's Child Protection Registry Act violates the U.S. constitution and is pre-empted by the federal Can Spam Act.
The group argued Utah's law “unduly burdens” legitimate businesses “and creates the kind of unworkable ‘balkanization’ of e-mail regulation that the federal pre-emption provisions of Can Spam are designed to prohibit.”
U.S. District Judge Clark Waddoups dismissed the lawsuit with prejudice—meaning the Free Speech Coalition can’t bring the same claim again— after an agreement was reached by both parties. Details of the agreement were not made public.
"The door is officially shut to anyone who wants to send porn to families and children in Utah," said Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff in a statement. "The registry actually helps business owners if they truly want adult-oriented material to only go to adults who are not registered with the state program."
Laws in Michigan and Utah went into effect in 2005 establishing so-called children's protection registries that allow parents and guardians to enter children's e-mail addresses and “other contact points” as off limits to material that is illegal for minors to view or buy.
Marketers who want to send e-mail with content inappropriate for minors are required to scrub their lists against the registries each month in Utah and Michigan for $5 and $7, respectively, per 1,000 e-mail addresses.
Critics contend the laws do nothing to protect children from inappropriate material while shaking down law-abiding marketers for money.
Moreover, the Federal Trade Commission determined that rather than protecting children, the registries in Utah and Michigan put them at higher risk of being exposed to online predators.
According to Diane Duke, executive director of the Free Speech Coalition, the organization agreed to have the suit dismissed because most of Utah’s complaints filed under its child-protection-registry law were not aimed at the adult entertainment industry and that while Utah has spent a considerable amount of money administering the program, the state has yet to recover any money in fines.
“The program is a complete failure,” Duke said in a statement. “No state with any fiscal intelligence whatsoever would even consider such a program. That is all we needed to know from the litigation so we moved to dismiss.”
According to Shurtleff, more than 340,000 Utahns have signed up for the state’s registry.
