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Nature of Suit Code: 950
Nature of Suit: Constitutionality of State Statutes
Cause of Action: 

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In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit ____________________

No. 16-2059

PATRIOTIC VETERANS, INC.,

Plaintiff-Appellant,

v.

GREG ZOELLER, Attorney General of Indiana,

Defendant-Appellee.

____________________

Appeal from the United States District Court for the

Southern District of Indiana, Indianapolis Division.

No. 1:10-cv-723-WTL-MPB — William T. Lawrence, Judge.

____________________

ARGUED NOVEMBER 1, 2016 — DECIDED JANUARY 3, 2017

____________________

Before EASTERBROOK, ROVNER, and SYKES, Circuit Judges.

EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judge. Plaintiff, a veterans’ group, 

contends that an anti-robocall statute, Ind. Code §24-5-14-5, 

violates the First Amendment to the Constitution, applied to 

the states by the Fourteenth Amendment. The Telephone 

Consumer Protection Act, 47 U.S.C. §227, which contains a 

similar limit, has been sustained by two circuits. See Gomez 

v. Campbell-Ewald Co., 768 F.3d 871 (9th Cir. 2014), affirmed 

on other grounds, 136 S. Ct. 663 (2016); Van Bergen v. MinneCase: 16-2059 Document: 24 Filed: 01/03/2017 Pages: 6
2 No. 16-2059

sota, 59 F.3d 1541, 1549–56 (8th Cir. 1995); Moser v. FCC, 46

F.3d 970 (9th Cir. 1995). The same circuits have approved 

state laws as well. See Van Bergen (sustaining a Minnesota 

law in addition to §227); Bland v. Fessler, 88 F.3d 729 (9th Cir. 

1996) (California law). But relying on Cahaly v. LaRosa, 796 

F.3d 399 (4th Cir. 2015), which found South Carolina’s antirobocall law to be unconstitutional, plaintiff maintains that 

Reed v. Gilbert, 135 S. Ct. 2218 (2015), made these decisions 

obsolete and dooms both state and federal anti-robocall statutes as instances of content discrimination. We disagree with 

that contention and conclude that Indiana’s law is valid.

Indiana forbids recorded phone messages placed by automated dialing machines unless “(1) the subscriber has 

knowingly or voluntarily requested, consented to, permitted, or authorized receipt of the message; or (2) the message 

is immediately preceded by a live operator who obtains the 

subscriber’s consent before the message is delivered.” Ind. 

Code §24-5-14-5(b). Plaintiff maintains that the option given 

by subsection (b)(2) is prohibitively expensive, so that as a 

practical matter the statute forbids robocalls in the absence 

of advance consent by the recipient. We shall assume that 

this is so. Yet the requirement of consent is not content discrimination, so plaintiff focuses attention on three statutory 

exceptions:

This section does not apply to any of the following messages:

(1) Messages from school districts to students, parents, or 

employees.

(2) Messages to subscribers with whom the caller has a current business or personal relationship.

(3) Messages advising employees of work schedules.

Case: 16-2059 Document: 24 Filed: 01/03/2017 Pages: 6
No. 16-2059 3

Ind. Code §24-5-14-5(a). The district court concluded that 

these exceptions do not constitute content discrimination 

and held that the law is constitutional. 177 F. Supp. 3d 1120 

(S.D. Ind. 2016). The district court had earlier deemed the 

Indiana statute preempted, but we reversed, 736 F.3d 1041 

(7th Cir. 2013), leaving only the constitutional challenge.

Plaintiff tells us that the statute as a whole disfavors political speech and therefore entails content discrimination, as

Reed understood that phrase. We don’t get it. Nothing in the 

statute, including the three exceptions, disfavors political 

speech. The statute as a whole disfavors cold calls (that is, 

calls to strangers), but if a recipient has authorized robocalls 

then the nature of the message is irrelevant. The three exceptions in §24-5-14-5(a) likewise depend on the relation between the caller and the recipient, not on what the caller 

proposes to say. Our first opinion described these exceptions 

as a form of implied consent, 736 F.3d at 1047, adding to the 

express consent exception in §24-5-14-5(b)(1). The exceptions 

collectively concern who may be called, not what may be 

said, and therefore do not establish content discrimination.

That’s not quite true of §24-5-14-5(a)(3), which deals with 

messages “advising employees of work schedules.” If plaintiff proposed to make automated calls to its own employees, 

it could contend that the restriction—the calls must concern 

work schedules—blocked it from including political speech. 

But, when asked at argument, counsel for plaintiff stated 

that the organization does not feel inhibited in communicating with its own employees—who, after all, may have 

given express consent under §24-5-14-5(b)(1). So if we were 

to hold that employers may say anything they like in automated calls to employees, this would do plaintiff no good. 

Case: 16-2059 Document: 24 Filed: 01/03/2017 Pages: 6
4 No. 16-2059

Nor would an injunction striking subsection (a)(3) from the 

statute. Such an injunction would make plaintiff worse off 

by making it harder to get in touch with its staff, and plaintiff understandably has not asked for that relief. What it 

wants is an order preventing Indiana from enforcing §24-5-

14-5(b). Potential problems with how subsection (a)(3) affects other persons do not give plaintiff standing to complain 

about subsection (b), its target in this suit.

Plaintiff’s other line of argument is that the statute is excessive in relation to its goal of protecting phone subscribers’ 

peace and quiet, and that the First Amendment thus requires 

Indiana to make an exception for political speech. That exception, if created, would be real content discrimination, and 

Reed then would prohibit the state from forbidding robocall 

advertising and other non-political speech. That’s the conclusion of Cahaly. South Carolina’s anti-robocall statute “applies to calls with a consumer or political message but does 

not reach calls made for any other purpose.” Cahaly, 796 F.3d 

at 405. The Fourth Circuit concluded that drawing lines on 

the basis of the message presented, rather than (as Indiana’s 

law does) consent by the person to be called, is content discrimination prohibited by the First Amendment. Plaintiff 

wants us to take a content-neutral law and make it invalid 

by creating message-based distinctions. That’s out of the 

question. Indiana’s law must stand or fall as written. Thus

the remaining question is not whether Indiana must allow 

automated politicking by phone, but whether it is entitled to 

make advance consent (express or implied) a condition of 

any automated phone call, regardless of subject.

No one can deny the legitimacy of the state’s goal: Preventing the phone (at home or in one’s pocket) from freCase: 16-2059 Document: 24 Filed: 01/03/2017 Pages: 6
No. 16-2059 5

quently ringing with unwanted calls. Every call uses some of 

the phone owner’s time and mental energy, both of which 

are precious. Most members of the public want to limit calls, 

especially cell-phone calls, to family and acquaintances, and 

to get their political information (not to mention their advertisements) in other ways. Federal law severely limits unsolicited calls to cell phones, 47 U.S.C. §227(b)(1)(A)(iii), and the 

FTC maintains a do-not-call registry for landline phones, just 

as the Postal Service maintains a no-junk-mail list. These devices have been sustained against constitutional challenge. 

See, e.g., Rowan v. Post Office, 397 U.S. 728 (1970) (junk-mail 

list); Mainstream Marketing Services, Inc. v. FTC, 358 F.3d 1228 

(10th Cir. 2004) (do-not-call registry). Limits on unsolicited 

faxes have been sustained on similar reasoning. See, e.g., 

Missouri ex rel. Nixon v. American Blast Fax, Inc., 323 F.3d 649 

(8th Cir. 2003).

But number porting has made it increasingly hard to distinguish cell numbers from landline numbers, and many 

callers disregard (or are exempt from) the do-not-call registry because it is expensive to check the FTC’s list against lists 

of potential call recipients. That’s why the national government and states such as Indiana have adopted limits on a 

particular calling technology, the robocall, that many recipients find obnoxious because there’s no live person at the 

other end of the line. The lack of a live person makes the call 

frustrating for the recipient but cheap for the caller, which 

multiplies the number of these aggravating calls in the absence of legal controls. Anyone proposing to queue up a robocall knows its own technology, even if it does not know 

whether the potential recipient is a cell phone or landline 

phone, or is on or off the do-not-call list.

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6 No. 16-2059

Everyone has plenty of ways to spread messages: TV, 

newspapers and magazines (including ads), websites, social 

media (Facebook, Twitter, and the like), calls from live persons, and even recorded spiels if a live operator first secures 

consent. Plaintiff can ask its donors and potential donors to 

agree to receive robocalls. Preventing automated messages 

to persons who don’t want their peace and quiet disturbed is 

a valid time, place, and manner restriction. Other circuits’ 

decisions, which we have cited, spell out the reasoning; 

repetition would be otiose. Because Indiana does not discriminate by content—the statute determines who may be 

called, not what message may be conveyed—these decisions 

have not been called into question by Reed.

AFFIRMED

Case: 16-2059 Document: 24 Filed: 01/03/2017 Pages: 6