California lawmakers ended the legislative session by sending two bills to Gov. Gray Davis that would tighten the state’s existing law on unsolicited advertising calls to cell phones and pagers with short message capabilities.
Sponsors of the two measures, Republican Assemblyman Tim Leslie and Democratic Assemblywoman Christine Kehoe say their bills fill gaps in the federal law — primarily the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA).
The TCPA prohibits marketers from sending unsolicited faxes to consumers without permission, and it allows states to enact stiffer regulations.
Leslie’s bill, AB-1769, would ban telemarketing calls to cell phones and pagers without permission. Kehoe’s bill, AB-2944, would forbid unsolicited calls to those same devices when a consumer would have to pay for the call.
The proposed bills “go a little bit further than existing federal law,” says Jim Conway, vice president for government relations at the Direct Marketing Association. They may be “an added burden for marketers who use that medium, but they can be complied with fairly easily.”
Both Leslie and Kehoe’s bills were strongly endorsed by various California consumer groups, including the state’s Chamber of Commerce, the California Retailers Association and the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse.
But they were vigorously opposed by a coalition of California telemarketing companies, including Fax.com, an Orange County-based e-mail marketing firm that’s currently facing disciplinary action by state and federal authorities for alleged violations of the TCPA.
Gov. Davis, who is required by law to act on the measures within 30 days of passage, has not indicated whether he will sign either of the proposals into law.
Leslie said in a statement that his bill would “end the practice of spamming cellular phones before it becomes the huge problem that e-mail spam has become.”
Kehoe and Democratic Sen. Debra Bowen, who co-sponsored AB-2944 in the state Senate, said in a separate statement that their bill “makes it crystal clear that in California, you’ve got to get a person’s permission before you start faxing them ad after ad after ad.”
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