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Supreme Court refuses to hear spam challenge

Anne Broache CNET News

Published: 10 Jan 2006 10:10 GMT

The US Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear an appeal from an online dating service that claimed it had the right to send unsolicited emails to thousands of University of Texas email accounts.

In 2003, the University of Texas blocked thousands of unsolicited emails sent to its users by White Buffalo Ventures, a start-up that specialises in establishing online-dating services for third-party customers. The site in question was LonghornSingles.com, which targets the university's vast student population.

In February 2003, White Buffalo legally obtained a list of all of the university's "nonconfidential, nonexempt" email addresses by filling a Freedom of Information Act request, according to the text of a federal appeals court opinion released in August.

Soon thereafter, the University of Texas received several complaints by students receiving "unsolicited email blasts" from the company, according to court fillings. Citing its Board of Regents' general policy against solicitation, the university ordered the spamming to stop. When White Buffalo didn't listen, the university had its IP addresses blocked.

White Buffalo responded with a lawsuit, alleging that the federal Can-Spam Act pre-empted the university's policy and that blocking its IP addresses violated the company's First Amendment right to free speech.

A federal trial court in Western Texas sided with the university, and a three-judge panel at the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that ruling in August.

The appeals court also concluded that the Can-Spam Act wasn't intended to ISPs, including those run by public universities, from filtering spam — though the court did suggest that the University of Texas could have taken narrower steps to do so. The case appeared to be the first to address that aspect of Can-Spam.

Neither the university nor White Buffalo Ventures could be immediately reached for comment.

ZDNet UK sister site CNET News.com's Declan McCullagh contributed to this report.