The Senate may have indirectly derailed two House bills to regulate the direct mail sweepstakes industry Monday when it approved and sent to the House legislation imposing tough new restrictions on sweepstakes mailers.
Senate passage of the Deceptive Mail Prevention and Enforcement Act (S-335), sponsored by Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) appears to have eliminated the need for the two less restrictive House bills, making today’s planned hearing on them by the House postal subcommittee, chaired by Rep. John McHugh (R-NY) seem superfluous.
Plans for the subcommittee’s hearing on the Honesty in Sweepstakes Act (HR-170), sponsored by Rep. Frank LoBiondo (R-NJ), and the Sweepstakes Protection Act (HR-237), sponsored by Rep. James Rogan (R-CA), were made before the Senate decided to take up the Collins bill.
If the hearing is held today as scheduled, representatives of the Direct Marketing Association, Alliance of Nonprofit Mailers, National Federation of Nonprofits, Magazine Publishers Association, and Promotional Marketing Association, the Federal Trade Commission and others are expected to support passage of the Senate bill over the LoBiondo and Rogan bills while defending the use of sweepstakes mailings as a legitimate marketing tool.
Although less detailed, both the LoBiondo and Rogan bills, would require sweepstakes mailers to conspicuously state in their mailings that it is an offer to participate in a sweepstakes while increasing the postal service’s authority to investigate and seize deceptive mailings and increase the penalties for violators.
“We supported this legislation because it sets national standards for the sweepstakes industry,” said Chris Irving, spokesman for Publishers Clearing House, one of the largest sweepstakes operators in the country.
Jeanne Meyer, spokesman for American Family Enterprises, which operates the American Family Publishers sweepstakes, observed that “Many of the requirements in the Collins bill are things that American Family Enterprises has been doing for some time or pioneered.”
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