Virginia’s attorney general asked the nation’s highest court Thursday to revive a state anti-spam law struck down by a lower court as unconstitutionally overbroad.
Virginia’s Supreme Court ruled in September that the law violates the free-speech protections of the First Amendment because it prohibits anonymously sending any type of unsolicited bulk e-mail, including political and religious messages. Most states have anti-spam laws, and there is a federal statute, but Virginia’s is the only one that is not limited to commercial e-mails.
In asking for a reversal of the ruling, Attorney General Bob McDonnell said that the state court erred in its conclusion that some “imaginary spammer” could be unfairly prosecuted for sending political or religious e-mails. The justices “invalidated a statute on its face based on a hypothetical application that occurs very infrequently, if it occurs at all,” he wrote in his petition to the U.S. Supreme Court.
McDonnell said he expects a decision on the petition early next year.
The ruling invalidating Virginia’s law also overturned the conviction of Jeremy Jaynes, who once was considered one of the world’s most prolific spammers. Jaynes bombarded Internet users with millions of pieces of spam, all of it commercial.
Jaynes’ attorney, Thomas M. Wolf, said he doubts the Supreme Court will hear the case because the lower court’s unanimous ruling was so clear-cut and the statute’s constitutional infirmity could be easily cured with an amendment restricting its application to commercial spam.
“As Justice (G. Steven) Agee said in the court’s opinion, if the Federalist Papers were written today and disseminated by e-mail, the sender would be guilty of a felony under Virginia’s anti-spam statute,” Wolf said.
The Federalist Papers were essays written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay under the pseudonym “Publius” urging ratification of the Constitution.
Lawyers for the state had argued that the First Amendment doesn’t…