A Washington bill governing unsolicited commercial e-mail was upheld today in an unanimous opinion by the state Supreme Court.
The nine-person court overthrew a lower court’s ruling that the state’s Commercial Electronic Mail Act violates the commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution. That law prohibits misrepresentation in the subject line or transmission path of commercial e-mail message sent to state residents.
Justice Susan J. Owens wrote that the local benefits of the law “outweigh any conceivable burdens the Act places on those sending commercial e-mail messages.”
Jason Heckel, whose alleged sending of bulk e-mail prompted the case, must now undergo civil trial. An attorney for Heckel, Dale L. Crandall, Salem, OR, said that the case could reach the U.S. Supreme Court, but not before the local trial takes place.
The case began in 1998 when Washington filed a civil suit against Heckel, an Oregon resident doing business as Natural Instincts.
Heckel used bulk e-mail to market an online booklet titled “How to Profit from the Internet,” sending from 100,000 to 1 million unsolicited messages a week, according to Owens’ account of the case.
Complaints received by the state’s consumer protection office alleged that Heckle’s messages contained misleading subject lines and false transmissions paths, in violation of the Act.
In addition, Owens wrote, Heckel “routed his spam through at least a dozen different domain names without receiving permission to do so.” He also used Juno accounts to post a dozen different return e-mail addresses, the papers continued.
These were canceled when he sent bulk e-mail, but when Juno canceled one-mail account, Heckel “would simply open a new one and send another bulk mailing,” Owens continued.
The state alleged that Heckel had used one of two subject lines to introduce his solicitations: “Did I get the right e-mail address?” and “For your review
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