Indiana Ban On Robocalls Survives U.S. Supreme Court Petition

An Indiana law banning robocalls will stand after a seven-year legal battle, after the U.S. Supreme Court decided this week not to review a lower court’s decision in the case.

The legal challenge from a group called Patriotic Veterans, Inc. started in 2010. It sought to create an exception for political messages in Indiana’s laws against robocalls. Current law allows campaigns and political groups to make live calls, even to numbers registered on the do not call list.

The final decision in the case falls back on a ruling from the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals after the Supreme Court denied to review it. That court upheld Indiana’s law banning robocalls.

In a statement, Attorney General Curtis Hill says without the law, robocalls would become a nuisance. The Attorney General’s Office received more than 15,000 complaints about unwanted calls in 2016, many of them robocalls.

The penalty for violating that law is up to $5,000 per call.