This bill amends existing Washington law by changing the state rules for telephone solicitation (amending RCW 80.36.390) and for commercial electronic text messages and related definitions (amending RCW 19.190.010 and RCW 19.190.060). For telephone solicitors it creates new procedural requirements and prohibitions: callers must identify themselves, the company or organization, and the purpose of the call within the first 30 seconds; if requesting a donation they must ask whether to continue, end the call, or remove the called party from their lists; the call must be ended within 10 seconds if the called party asks to end it; removal requests must be honored for at least one year, the caller may not make further solicitations to removed numbers for at least one year, and may not sell or give the removed person’s contact information to other companies (with a limited exception for returning the list to the company from which it was received). Calls are prohibited before 8:00 a.m. or after 8:00 p.m. local time, and initiating calls to numbers on the federal do not call registry or in violation of 47 U.S.C. §227(e)(1) is unlawful. The bill also creates prohibitions on initiating or assisting the transmission of commercial electronic text messages to telephone numbers assigned to Washington residents for cellular or pager service, and bars sending such electronic text messages to numbers listed on the federal do not call registry. Violations addressed in the telephone solicitation provisions are designated unfair or deceptive acts under the Washington Consumer Protection Act; specified violations carry fines of up to $1,000 per violation, the attorney general may enforce the law, and an aggrieved person may pursue a civil action in superior court with statutory damages of at least $1,000 per individual violation plus reasonable attorneys’ fees and costs for prevailing plaintiffs. The utilities and transportation commission is directed by rule to require telecommunications companies to inform residential customers of the telephone solicitation provisions via annual billing notice or conspicuous consumer information pages. The bill also amends and adds definitions in the commercial electronic mail and text message statutes (RCW 19.190.010), including definitions for terms such as “assist the transmission,” “commercial electronic mail message,” “commercial electronic text message,” “electronic text message,” “initiate the transmission,” “interactive computer service,” “internet,” and “internet domain name,” and includes definitions for “personally identifying information” and “web page.” Some text is missing from the provided extracts: the remainder of the “person” definition in RCW 19.190.010 is cut off, the full amended text of RCW 19.190.060 is not included, and a definition fragment for “commercial entity” is incomplete, so any additional provisions, penalties, or exceptions elsewhere in the bill cannot be determined from the provided material.

If enacted, firms and organizations that make live or automated sales or donation calls into Washington will have to change how they operate: callers must identify themselves and the caller’s organization and purpose within 30 seconds, ask for explicit permission before continuing a donation request, immediately end the call if asked and stop calls to any number the person asks removed for at least one year, avoid calling outside 8:00 a.m.–8:00 p.m. local time, and not call numbers on the federal do-not-call list. Those changes will drive real costs for training, revised scripts, list management and vendor controls, and raise legal risk because violations can trigger up to $1,000 fines per violation, enforcement by the attorney general under the consumer protection law, and private lawsuits that require courts to award at least $1,000 per violation plus attorneys’ fees. Businesses that send or assist in sending commercial text messages to Washington residents face a broad ban on initiating or helping transmit commercial texts to Washington cellular numbers and to numbers on the federal do-not-call registry, so marketers will likely stop texting Washington numbers or add screening and contract changes with service providers; telecommunications companies will also need to provide annual customer notice as required by the utilities commission. The bill text provided omits the complete amended language of RCW 19.190.060 and portions of some definitions, so the full scope of some exceptions, enforcement details, and exact penalty provisions for text-message violations are not completely clear from these extracts.