Radley Balko takes on new federal regulations designed to limit unwanted faxing.
An entertaining federal law called the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) - passed back when fax paper was special and pricey - also provides a civil cause of action replete with punitive statutory damages for recipients of unwanted attention from serial faxers with whom they have no existing business relationship. I looked it up one day after plucking a filing out of a pile of ads for cheap printer cartridges. The sender was apparently trying to boost demand for his product as well as name recognition.
The entertaining part? Congress decided that state courts - not federal courts - should have exclusive jurisdiction over these lawsuits. Moreover, existing court decisions require the state courts to hear these federal law cases that federal courts are apparently to busy to hear.
The incentive problem should be obvious: Congress can get political credit for passing laws that address annoying problems with hundreds of ticky-tack suits, while shifting all the costs of actually adjudicating those suits onto the state courts rather than the federal courts. The TCPA is an unfunded mandate.
I actually think there may be a 10th amendment problem with this related to state judicial independence, but haven't really looked into it.
Posted by Marie Gryphon on August 8, 2003I work for a nonprofit, and we're all scrambling around trying to get written permission to fax invitations and press notices (we do publications, so they're considered "ads" because we mention that we sell books) to our regular mailing list. I curse the FCC.
I'll have more on this on my blog later this week...