The City of Seattle won’t appeal a 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in favor of the Local Search Association and yellow pages publishers that held Seattle’s opt-out ordinance (and recycling fee) for print directories violated publishers’ First Amendment rights.
Seattle could have appealed to the US Supreme Court, though wouldn’t have been guaranteed a hearing there. Instead the city is going to pay $500,000 to settle the litigation.
What this case and associated precedent effectively mean is that there will be no more opt-out or opt-in municipal ordinances targeting print directories for at least the foreseeable future.
February 20th, 2013 at 11:49 pm
I’m dumping my unwanted Yellow Pages at the front door of Perkins Cole, the lawyers representing the directory publishers.
Their Seattle office address is:
1201 Third Avenue
Suite 4900
Seattle, Washington
98101
PHONE: 206.359.8000
http://www.perkinscoie.com/seattle/
Here’s the Perkins Cole press release gloating about their victory:
http://tinyurl.com/b6tdda9
I used our (now illegal) City of Seattle opt-out list to refuse delivery of any directories. If I receive any, I’m delivering them to the PerkinsCole offices.
February 24th, 2013 at 5:01 pm
Ganesh that would be rather amusing to see a massive pile of unwanted books building up in front of the lawyers office.
I couldn’t imagine that YP suing for damages like this is going to win over the hearts and minds of many local residents.