Suits Seek to Overturn Ban on Dial-a-Porn Phone Messages

A company that provides “dial-a-porn” services and an anonymous group of “consenting adults” have filed lawsuits to prevent a new law banning pornographic telephone messages from taking effect July 1.

The suits were filed in federal court in Los Angeles by an affiliate of one of the country’s largest dial-a-porn providers and in New York by a group calling itself “Consenting Adults Telephone Rights Assn.”

The government has agreed not to enforce the law until July 25 at the earliest, after a California federal judge reviews the case and decides whether to put the law on hold temporarily pending further hearings, said Justice Department sources who spoke on the condition that they not be identified.

Challenges to the law were expected. When President Reagan signed a massive education measure to which the dial-a-porn ban was added, he noted that “current Supreme Court jurisprudence is unfriendly to parts of this bill.”

The law applies only to interstate dial-a-porn calls and those in the District of Columbia, but most dial-a-porn services use a 976 prefix and must be reached from a local exchange. Only in California and a few other states can they be reached by long-distance with an area code.

The law does not distinguish between live and recorded phone communications.

It provides for both criminal and civil prosecution and carries penalties of up to $100,000 for each day of violation and imprisonment of up to six months.

Dial-a-porn is estimated to produce about $54 million a year in revenue for providers and phone companies, according to the Information Industry Bulletin.

The plaintiffs in both suits charge that the law would infringe on their First Amendment rights.

The Los Angeles lawsuit, filed earlier this month by Sable Communications of California Inc., claims that the law is over-broad and vague, chills free speech and is not the least restrictive way to keep children from reaching these services.

Sable Communications is an affiliate of New York-based Carlin Communications Inc., one of the country’s largest dial-a-porn providers.

Lawrence Abelman, an attorney for Carlin whose name appears on the suit, did not return several telephone calls seeking his comment.

Carlin several times has challenged Federal Communications Commission dial-a-porn rules requiring providers to restrict access to children. The Sable suit notes that a federal appeals court decision in a Carlin challenge earlier this year ruled that the government could ban “obscene” but not “indecent” telephone communications.

The FCC, applying a Supreme Court test, considers material to be obscene if it depicts sexual acts in a patently offensive way, appealing to the prurient interest of an average person and lacking serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value.

The new law bans both obscene and indecent phone messages.

In U.S. District Court in New York, a suit filed Thursday seeks to block enforcement of the law against “live telephone conversations between consenting adults that have been paid for in advance by credit card,” said Bruce J. Ennis Jr., a Washington attorney who filed the suit.

Ennis said the plaintiffs in the action want to remain anonymous for reasons of privacy. They are listed in the suit as “Jane Roe, John Doe Inc. and Consenting Adults Telephone Rights Assn.”

Pressure from anti-pornography groups and complaints about access by children who run up huge bills listening to pornographic messages has been reducing the areas in which recorded dial-a-porn services may operate.

BellSouth, the regional Bell company covering nine southeastern states, does not allow dial-a-porn on its network, and US West has begun to pull the plug on these recorded messages in the 14 states it serves.