National Advertisers Support CTIA Cert in RF Safety Case

Advertisers urged the Supreme Court to take up CTIA’s challenge of an RF disclosure law by Berkeley, California (see 1910030056). By upholding the law that requires the wireless industry warn about possible dangers of overexposure to wireless frequencies, the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals “disregarded bedrock First Amendment requirements,” the Association of National Advertisers wrote in an amicus brief Thursday in case No. 19-439. The appeals court contradicted the Supreme Court’s “growing recognition of greater protection of commercial speech and improperly assumes all compelled commercial disclosures necessarily receive the most relaxed level of constitutional scrutiny,” ANA said. It "permits compelled commercial speech as a remedy to serve any governmental interest so long as it is ‘more than trivial,’ and supports any disclosure that is arguably factual, regardless of the overall impression created.” The 9th Circuit denied First Amendment protections to the wireless industry, agreed the Pacific Legal Foundation in a Wednesday brief: That decision “promotes both over-warning and senseless mandatory labeling that ultimately harm consumers and the public interest.”