Statement of Commissioner Orson Swindle
Concurring in Part and Dissenting in Part
TriState Advertising Unlimited, Inc., Matter No. X990003
I believe that the relief in the settlement agreement is generally appropriate to address the law violations alleged in this case. I do not support the ban contained in Part II.B., however, to the extent that it covers soliciting charitable donations. Extending the ban to the solicitation of charitable donations is not reasonably related to preventing the defendants from engaging in deception that is the same as or similar to the false claims that they made while selling advertisements in purported civic publications. Moreover, to the extent that the Commission imposes relief relating to the solicitation of charitable donations, the public interest would be better served if the relief were limited to a prohibition on misrepresentations made while soliciting charitable donations, instead of extending to a permanent ban on non-misleading, fully-protected speech. See Riley v. Nat'l Fed'n of the Blind, 487 U.S. 781, 796 (1988).