A federal judge in Denver Wednesday rejected a last-ditch effort by a coalition of telemarketers to stop Colorado’s telemarketing do-not-call list from going into effect on Monday.
U.S. District Judge Robert Blackburn said the law did not trample on the plaintiff’s First Amendment rights. At the same time he said the measure assures Colorado residents placing their names on the list that they will not receive annoying and unwanted telemarketing calls.
Jeffrey Burke, president of a Denver mortgage lending company, Lending Team Concepts, the coalition’s leader, indicated that the group plans to challenge the judge’s ruling before the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.
Members of the coalition, known as Colorado Citizens For Free Speech, include a number of telemarketing firms in the state as well as Metro News Service, the telemarketer used by the Denver Newspaper Agency seeking new subscribers for both the Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News.
Sean Gallagher, the coalition’s lawyer, argued that the law not only violated its collective right to free speech, but was riddled with loopholes an exemptions for politicians, pollsters, fundraisers, charities and “a handful of privileged large corporations.”
Attorney General Ken Salazar defended the law as a “common-sense solution” for Colorado residents “who feel strongly about protecting the privacy of their homes.”
Noting that nearly 750,000 residents have asked to have their name placed on the do-not-call list, Salazar said the law was designed to protect senior citizens from being exploited by unscrupulous telemarketers and scam artists.
A little more than a year ago, on June 6, 2001, Gov. Bill Owens signed House Bill 01-1405 into law. The legislation authorized the state’s Public Utilities Commission to develop and maintain the do-not-call list program for the state and selling copies of the list to telemarketers at fees of between $100 and $500, depending on how many employees they have.
Telemarketers violating the law could be fined up to $2,000 per incident.
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