University of Texas had right to block spam, 5th Circuit rules
AUSTIN, Texas — The University of Texas didn’t violate the constitutional rights of an online dating service when it blocked thousands of unsolicited e-mails, a federal appeals court panel ruled this week.
White Buffalo Ventures, which operates LonghornSingles.com, had appealed to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, saying it had complied with all anti-spam laws.
The company argued that the university violated its constitutional rights by filtering out 59,000 e-mails in 2003. White Buffalo also claimed a federal act that allows certain e-mails superseded the university’s anti-spam policy.
A three-judge panel of the 5th Circuit, ruling Aug. 2 in White Buffalo Ventures v. University of Texas at Austin, said that the federal anti-spam law, CAN-SPAM, does not pre-empt the university’s policy and that the policy is permissible under the First Amendment.
The law requires messages to have a title that correctly states the contents of the e-mail and a valid e-mail address and that companies honor requests to unsubscribe.
The court did not need to rule on whether the state university e-mail servers are public or private.
The Austin-based service had legally obtained the addresses from the university, but the university started blocking the e-mail messages, saying White Buffalo was part of a larger spam problem that had crashed the computer system.
The university said it was also responding to complaints from students and faculty.
At the time, UT issued a cease-and-desist order, but White Buffalo refused to comply. So UT blocked all the e-mail messages from White Buffalo’s IP address.
The court determined that White Buffalo had complied with federal law and that its e-mails were not illegal, but the law applied to UT as it would to an Internet service provider that employs protection measures.
Tags: e-mail, public college, spam, Texas, university
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Ken Paulson is president and chief executive officer of the First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt University and in Washington, D.C. Previously, Paulson served as the editor and senior vice president/news of USA Today.
Gene Policinski, senior vice president and executive director of the First Amendment Center and president and chief operating officer of the Diversity Institute, is a veteran journalist whose career has included work in newspapers, radio, television and online.
John Seigenthaler founded the First Amendment Center in 1991 with the mission of creating national discussion, dialogue and debate about First Amendment rights and values.
Dr. Charles C. Haynes is director of the Religious Freedom Education Project at the Newseum. He writes and speaks extensively on religious liberty and religion in American public life.
David L. Hudson Jr. is an expert in First Amendment issues who writes for firstamendmentcenter.org and for other publications. Hudson teaches law and was a scholar at the First Amendment Center.
Tiffany Villager is director/First Amendment studies at the First Amendment Center, which she joined in 1993. She also served as the center’s research manager and research coordinator, and developed the center’s library.
