Opinion ID: 2999582
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Merits of the First Amendment Claim

Text: The parties disagree about which method of First Amendment analysis is most appropriate in this case. The Plaintiffs argue that the Act is a content-based regulation that should be subjected to strict scrutiny. See United States v. Playboy Entm’t Group, Inc., 529 U.S. 803, 813 (2000) (citing Sable Commc’ns of Cal., Inc. v. FCC, 492 U.S. 115, 126 (1989)) (setting out strict scrutiny standard for contentbased speech restrictions). The State advances a less traditional method of analysis based on the Supreme Court’s decisions in Rowan v. United States Postal Service, 397 U.S. 728 (1970), and Hill v. Colorado, 530 U.S. 703 (2000). Under the State’s theory, because of the “opt in” nature of the Act, we need only determine that the State’s interest in maintaining residential privacy for Indiana citizens outweighs the speaker’s right to communicate his or her message into private homes. The State’s argument is primarily based on Rowan. In that case, the Supreme Court reviewed a law that allowed customers of the U.S. Postal Service to prohibit delivery of sales literature for items “which the addressee in his sole discretion believes to be erotically arousing or sexually provocative.” The Court upheld the statute, citing the need for a person to be safe from any unwanted message—even a “valid message”—in his or her own home. Because the homeowner had to take an affirmative act to prohibit mailings, the Court wrote: 8 No. 05-3995 [I]t seems to us that a mailer’s right to communicate must stop at the mailbox of the unreceptive addressee. . . . To hold less would tend to license a form of trespass and would make hardly more sense than to say that a radio or television viewer may not twist the dial to cut off an offensive or boring communication and thus bar its entering his home. Nothing in the Constitution compels us to listen to or view any unwanted communication, whatever its merit[.] Rowan, 397 U.S. at 736-37. The Rowan Court went on to state, “In effect, Congress has erected a wall—or more accurately permits a citizen to erect a wall—that no advertiser may penetrate without his acquiescence. . . . [T]he citizen cannot be put to the burden of determining on repeated occasions whether the offending mailer has altered its material so as to make it acceptable.” Id. at 738. Most tellingly, the Court directly held, “We therefore categorically reject the argument that a vendor has a right under the Constitution or otherwise to send unwanted material into the home of another. . . . [N]o one has a right to press even ‘good’ ideas on an unwilling recipient.” Id. The State argues that the do-not-call list similarly insulates people in their own homes from unwanted messages, and similarly requires residents to take affirmative steps before doing so. Certain trial courts have found Rowan inapplicable to donot-call lists, however. For example, when the district court of Colorado heard an early challenge to the national do-notcall list in Mainstream Marketing, Inc. v. Federal Trade Commission, 283 F. Supp. 2d 1151 (D. Colo. 2003), rev’d, 358 F.3d 1228 (10th Cir. 2004), it found that, unlike the statute in Rowan, the national do-not-call registry exempted certain callers, such as charities, from the list. This exemption, the district court believed, removed discretion from the consumer in a manner that the statute in Rowan did not and consequently increased the government’s No. 05-3995 9 discretion to decide which speech was prohibited. Id. (analyzing the claim as a content-based restriction of commercial speech under Central Hudson Gas & Electric Corp. v. Public Service Commission of New York, 447 U.S. 557 (1980)). A district court in North Dakota did not apply Rowan to North Dakota’s do-not-call list based on similar reasoning. Fraternal Order of Police v. Stenehjem, 287 F. Supp. 2d 1023 (D.N.D. 2003) (evaluating the case under the charitable speech standard articulated in Village of Schaumburg v. Citizens for a Better Environment, 444 U.S. 620 (1980)), rev’d, 431 F.3d 591 (8th Cir. 2005). Neither the Eighth Circuit nor the Tenth Circuit directly addressed a Rowan argument similar to the one the State presses here. Instead, they reversed by employing more standard First Amendment analysis. We find the State’s Rowan analogy persuasive, and choose to adopt it here. We agree with the aforementioned district courts that the Supreme Court’s reservations about a prior version of the act at issue in Rowan could be relevant to our analysis here. The act that the Rowan court upheld allowed a postal customer to block all future mailings from a sender after determining that any single mailing from the sender was “erotically arousing or sexually provocative.” A prior version of that act would have allowed the Postmaster General to review all future mailings from the sender to determine if they fell within a proscribed class of “pandering advertisements,” and override a consumer’s wishes not to receive mailings that the Postmaster determined did not fall into that category. Rowan, 397 U.S. at 732-33. The Court distinguished the prior version from the final version, emphasizing that the final version allowed “the addressee complete and unfettered discretion in electing whether or not he desired to receive further material from a particular sender.” Id. The Court wrote that although the act was acceptable in its final form, its first form would have been more 10 No. 05-3995 problematic. Forcing the Postmaster to decide which of a sender’s mailings were “similar” to the ones that had prompted the addressee’s objection and to continue delivering all other mailings was “open to at least two criticisms.” Id. at 735. The first is that it would potentially expose the addressee to future unwanted mail; the second was that it would “interpose the Postmaster General between the sender and the addressee and, at the least, create the appearance if not the substance of govern- mental censorship.” Id. The Rowan Court’s discussion of legislative history of the act at issue in that case lends a degree of support to the district courts’ view that Rowan is inapplicable whenever a resident does not have the complete discretion to block any form of unwanted communication through a given medium. We believe that this was not the Supreme Court’s intent, however. Most persuasively, in footnote 4, during the discussion of the potential problems with the old version of the act, the Rowan Court wrote, Subsection (d) [of the version of the act that was later upheld] vests the Postmaster General with the duty to determine whether the sender has violated the order. This determination was intended to be primarily a ministerial one involving an adjudication of whether the initial material was an advertisement and whether the sender mailed materials to the addressee more than 30 days after the receipt of the prohibitory order. An interpretation which requires the Postmaster General to determine whether the subsequent material was pandering and/or similar would tend to place him “astride the flow of mail.” Id. at 735 n.4 (citing Lamont v. Postmaster General, 381 U.S. 301, 306 (1965)). We conclude that the Act places the Attorney General of Indiana in a “ministerial” role more analogous to that of No. 05-3995 11 the Postmaster General in the final legislation in Rowan than that act’s objectionable predecessor. The telephone calls that the Attorney General must allow to be placed to numbers on the do-not-call list are very well defined. For example, it involves little discretion to decide if the call was placed on behalf of a tax-exempt charity, or if the person who placed the call was a volunteer or employee of that charity. We therefore disagree with the view that Rowan is inapplicable merely because the Act imposes well-defined restrictions on precisely what protections from unwanted communication a residential phone customer may receive by opting in to the do-not-call list.2 We respectfully disagree with our concurring colleague that Rowan analysis has been displaced by subsequent Supreme Court authority creating frameworks for evaluating commercial and charitable speech. The Supreme Court has never disavowed Rowan. While the Court has subsequently cited the case primarily as authority for the state’s great interest in protecting residential privacy, we believe that this is because subsequent cases have not presented the appropriate venue for Rowan analysis, namely an opt-in statute that applies only to private residences in a manner that effectively protects residential privacy. Most notably, in Village of Schaumburg v. Citizens for a Better Environment, 444 U.S. 620 (1980), the case that our concurring 2 Although the concurrence criticizes this reasoning, we believe that concerns regarding the scope of exceptions to the statute are actually concerns about whether the statute is underbroad, and should be evaluated accordingly. As we discuss infra, we do not find the Act to be underbroad. Our reading of Rowan’s footnote four convinces us that the Court wished to avoid placing unbridled discretion in a government official: the Postmaster General. The Attorney General of Indiana does not have similar unbridled and potentially censorial discretion when enforcing the Act, which is why we view his role as “ministerial.” 12 No. 05-3995 colleague would have us apply here, the Court evaluated an ordinance that would forbid certain charities from soliciting door-to-door or on public streets. The Court specifically noted that the statute was “not directed to the unique privacy interests of persons residing in their homes because it applies not only to door-to-door solicitation, but also to solicitation on public streets and public ways.” Vill. of Schaumburg, 444 U.S. at 638-39 (internal quotation marks omitted). We agree that the Supreme Court has found that statutes are not narrowly tailored when they prohibit speech to all residences where it is feasible to allow only those households who do not wish to receive the speech to opt in to privacy protection. See, e.g., Playboy Entm’t Group, Inc., 529 U.S. at 814-15 (noting that blocking certain channels to all cable subscribers is unnecessarily restrictive, as the subscribers who did not wish to receive these channels could opt out of receiving them). However, we find no evidence that the Court has determined that Rowan’s authority only extends to narrow tailoring analysis. It is indeed rare that a legislature enacts an opt-in statute that effectively yet narrowly protects residential privacy. While concluding that Rowan remains binding precedent, we recognize that it is correctly applied only in limited circumstances. Once we have decided to apply the Rowan analysis, it would seem the case is resolved, since the Supreme Court has already made clear that citizens in their own homes have a stronger interest in being free from unwanted communication than a speaker has in speaking in a manner that invades residential privacy.3 However, the Plaintiffs 3 We acknowledge that an act that severely impinged on core First Amendment values, such as an opt-in list that allowed (continued...) No. 05-3995 13 strenuously argue that the Act is underbroad and therefore prohibited under Discovery Network. We agree that if the Act was so underbroad as to fail to materially advance the State’s interest in residential privacy, Plaintiffs might prevail even under Rowan.4 As discussed briefly in reference to standing, however, we believe that Indiana has shown that the Act’s exceptions bear a legitimate relationship to the important government purpose of protecting residential privacy. Aside from the results of the State’s survey discussed previously, we also conclude that the Act’s legitimacy 3 (...continued) homeowners to block calls from only one side of a political debate, might not survive a Rowan balancing test. That is not the case before us, however, and thus we need not address when precisely Rowan’s balancing of the interests begins to tilt in favor of speakers. We are satisfied that all the communications prohibited in this case are similar to those that were outweighed by citizens’ interests in residential privacy in Rowan. 4 This was the case in Pearson v. Edgar, 153 F.3d 397 (7th Cir. 1998). In that case, the statute in question forbade real estate agents from “solicit[ing] an owner of residential property to sell or list such residential property at any time after such person or corporation has notice that such owner does not desire to sell such residential property.” Pearson, 153 F.3d 399. Notably, this statute does not limit its ban to times when the homeowner is inside the home that he or she owns. Perhaps that is why the district court in that case found that the state had produced “no evidence . . . that real estate solicitation harms or threatens to harm residential privacy.” Id. at 404. We noted in that case that the Rowan test was not applicable to such an underbroad statute, even though the statute was of an opt in nature. Id. at 404 (“Here the state, not the homeowner, has made the distinction between real estate solicitations and other solicitations without a logical privacy-based reason.” (emphasis added)). Therefore, we cannot agree with our concurring colleague that Pearson rejected the Rowan framework with respect to an opt-in statute that is not underbroad and is confined to communications aimed solely at a residence. 14 No. 05-3995 is bolstered by the Supreme Court’s holding in Hill v. Colorado, 530 U.S. 703 (2000). In that case, the Court upheld a Colorado statute that criminalized knowingly approaching within eight feet of another person, without that person’s consent, “for the purpose of passing a leaflet or handbill to, displaying a sign to, or engaging in oral protest, education, or counseling with such other person . . .” within designated areas surrounding health care clinics. Hill, 530 U.S. at 706. The law was intended to protect women seeking to have an abortion from unwanted encounters with abortion protestors. The Court upheld the law, stating, “[T]he statute’s restriction seeks to protect those who enter a health care facility from the harassment . . . that can accompany an unwelcome approach. . . . The statutory phrases, ‘oral protest, education, and counseling,’ distinguish speech activities likely to have those consequences from those that are most unlikely to have those consequences.” Id. at 724. The Indiana legislature passed the Act in order to preserve residential privacy, which was being invaded by the sheer volume of calls inundating homes on a daily basis. This inundation could quite reasonably have been determined to occur when commercial motivation joins forces with a professional telemarketer possessing the technology and capacity to call thousands of people in a relatively short period of time. Allowing charities to place calls with only employees or volunteers, who will likely not place the large volume of calls that a professional telemarketer can place, would seem merely to reflect the legislature’s judgment of the limited intrusion the exception poses to residential privacy. It would seem anomalous to strike down a law because the legislature fostered as much speech as possible while still effectively protecting a state interest. Furthermore, we are mindful that if an ordinance is to regulate any speech, it must be able to withstand a First Amendment challenge. To that end, it is not surprising that No. 05-3995 15 the Indiana Attorney General has fashioned an “implicit exception” for political speech, even if that speech comes from professional telemarketers. Political speech has long been considered the touchstone of First Amendment protection in Supreme Court jurisprudence, and courts are prone to strike down legislation that attempts to regulate it. See, e.g., Buckley v. Am. Constitutional Law Found., Inc., 525 U.S. 182, 192 (1999) (“But the First Amendment requires us to be vigilant . . . to guard against undue hindrances to political conversations and the exchange of ideas.”); Roth v. United States, 354 U.S. 476, 484 (1957) (The First Amendment “was fashioned to assure unfettered interchange of ideas for the bringing about of political and social changes desired by the people.”) For example, in Meyer v. Grant, 486 U.S. 414 (1988), the Supreme Court struck down a law that prohibited Colorado citizens from paying individuals to circulate petitions for ballot initiatives. The Court believed that the law “limit[ed] the number of voices who will convey appellees’ message and therefore . . . limits the size of the audience that they can reach.” Id. at 422-23. The other exceptions in the Act similarly exclude speech from the Act’s purview that is less likely to cause invasions of privacy and more likely to create a valid First Amendment claim. Charitable speech is afforded heightened First Amendment protection, as both parties in this case acknowledge. See Vill. of Schaumburg v. Citizens for a Better Env’t, 444 U.S. 620 (1980). Newspapers have traditionally been a major forum for political speech and are at the heart of the historical justification for freedom of the press, and courts view with skepticism any law that could have a significantly damaging impact on the Fourth Estate. See Minneapolis Star & Tribune Co. v. Minnesota Comm’r of Revenue, 460 U.S. 575 (1983) (invalidating tax on ink that imposed a significant burden on newspapers as a violation of First Amendment freedom of the press). The 16 No. 05-3995 appellants themselves claim that the newspaper exception was added to the Act in response to the revelation that the Indianapolis Star received between 30 and 70 percent of its subscriptions and renewals from telemarketing. Real estate and insurance agents are also permitted to personally convey their commercial messages to customers under limited circumstances, because, as individuals directly communicating their own ideas, those professionals would have a stronger case for arguing prior restraint of speech. Since their calls must by nature be made by one individual, their intrusions are much less likely to significantly burden residents’ privacy than the voluminous calls a telemarketing firm could make. Because the Act sharply curtails telemarketing—the speech that was most injurious to residential privacy— while excluding speech that historically enjoys greater First Amendment protection, we are satisfied that the Act is not underbroad. Therefore, applying Rowan, we believe that the state’s interest in protecting residents’ right not to endure unwanted speech in their own homes outweighs any First Amendment interests the Plaintiffs possess.