On December 9, 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court issued an order declining to review a Berkeley, California ordinance that requires all cell-phone retailers to warn their customers about the supposed dangers of ordinary cell-phone use. The decision was set back for WLF, which filed a brief in the case urging review. The petition marked CTIA’s second request for the high court to review the Berkeley ordinance. The Court granted an earlier petition in 2018, vacated the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit’s opinion upholding the ordinance, and remanded the case for reconsideration in light of National Institute of Family and Life Advocates v. Becerra (2018). Even so, the Ninth Circuit once again sustained the ordinance against a First Amendment challenge, holding that the city’s mandated warning qualifies as a purely factual and noncontroversial disclosure under Zauderer v. Office of Disciplinary Counsel of Supreme Court of Ohio (1985).
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