03/06/2006
A U.S. District Court in California has ruled that the federal Telephone Consumer Protection Act overrides the state's fax-ban law that was to take effect Jan. 1, except in the case of intrastate faxes.
The TCPA allows faxes to be sent to recipients who already have an established relationship with the sender. The California law would have prevented businesses, membership and nonprofit organizations from sending commercial faxes to anyone without a signed consent form, which could not be faxed itself. The California law was scheduled to go into effect Jan. 1, 2006, but was delayed due in part to the amount of opposition from numerous groups, including NFIB.
The federal Junk Fax Prevention Act of 2005 provides customers a chance to opt out of unsolicited faxes but still allows businesses to fax to customers with whom they already have an existing business relationship. The California fax-ban law takes this initiative one step further, and interferes with the ability of many organizations to communicate with their customers.
NFIB applauds the Court's decision to preempt the California fax ban law, as it would have created numerous problems for small-business owners trying to communicate with their customers. Businesses frequently use faxes for communication, including the transmission of purchase orders, order confirmation, invoices, artwork proofs, sales tax exemptions and others. It would be extremely difficult for a small-business owner to ensure that every fax was sent out in compliance with the regulation.
