The basic allegations made by Plaintiffs are summarized by the court as follows:

This federal question action grows out of defendants' alleged misappropriation of the identities of certain plaintiffs -- twelve managers at Verizon Business Network Services ("Verizon") -- for the purpose of sending pro-union, anti-Verizon emails to Verizon employees under the managers' names. Defendants Harry Arnold and Pam Tronsor, acting as agents of defendant Communications Workers of America ("CWA"), allegedly created Yahoo email addresses using the names of nineteen Verizon managers, including twelve plaintiffs, and then used those email addresses to send unsolicited emails to numerous Verizon employees. These emails  falsely appeared to originate from the Verizon managers and disparaged Verizon while touting the benefits of unionization with CWA. 

Of the two questions presented by the court, the second is worth flagging:

Does the CAN SPAM Act provide a remedy for a provider of internet access services where, as here, the defendants' false and misleading spam emails were sent to the provider's employees via the provider's servers as  part of a labor organizing campaign? 

Where the emails commercial in nature?  The court answers this question affirmatively, notwithstanding Defendants' arguments that (1) they are a non-profit and (2) they were not intending to solicit union membership dues.  The court’s First Amendment discussion doesn’t (in my opinion) adequately dispose of Defendants’ colorable arguments.  The court looks to the edges – to the fact that the “profit motive” of the speaker is not determinative  of the character of speech, and the fact that many decisions have found that non-profits can engage in commercial speech.  The court does not get to Defendants’ core arguments – that they were "advocating," and not selling a product or service.  I don’t think that Defendants’ First Amendment arguments should have necessarily carried the day.  That said, I think the court gave these arguments short shrift.   (There are many issues underlying this analysis - difficult to do this issue justice in a two sentence snapshot.)

Having concluded that the messages were sufficiently commercial in nature to fall within CAN-SPAM, the court next addresses the question of whether the emails violated CAN-SPAM.  Defendants – somewhat predictably – cited to Mummagraphics and argued that any inaccuracies were not material.  The Court did not agree:

While Omega World Travel sensibly counsels appropriate caution in finding technical inaccuracies to be materially misleading, it does not militate in favor of dismissal here. While the inaccurate "from" line in Omega World Travel referred to a non-functional email address that was otherwise meaningless to the email's recipients, the inaccurate "from" line here identified the email author as a Verizon manager. Importantly, a message concerning working conditions or benefits at Verizon might have more credibility coming from a putative Verizon manager than an outsider. Thus, the misleading header information may have affected an objective recipient's opinion of the value of joining CWA. See 70 Fed. Reg. at 3115 (material fact under the Act is one "likely to affect a consumer's choice . . . regarding a product. In other words, it is information important to consumers."). In these circumstances, it is inappropriate to conclude, as a matter of law, that the misleading header information is immaterial.

At the end of the day, the court probably appropriately rejected Defendants’ Motion to Dismiss.  (The docket indicates that the case settled.)  It would have been nice to see a fuller discussion of the nuances.  Assuming the facts as articulated above are true, undoubtedly, Defendants committed tortious acts – however, it’s far from clear whether Plaintiffs should have obtained redress under CAN-SPAM.  It should have been obvious to the recipient that the email was sent for “solicitation” purposes.  Largely accurate contact information was contained in the message.  The key wrong (on the part of the Defendants) was to register yahoo email addresses in the name of Verizon managers.  This amounts to the tort of misappropriation against the managers, and maybe even against Verizon.  But it doesn’t feel like an obvious CAN-SPAM violation.  (There are specific provisions in CAN-SPAM dealing with the provision of false information in the context of obtaining an email address - I don't think those provisions were alleged to be violated here.)

Finally, I alluded to moveon.org in the title.  This may be a stretch.  But at first glance, the order certainly seems to muddy the waters as to whether political fundraising emails must comply with CAN-SPAM.  [NB: I should note that from everything I've seen, moveon is CAN-SPAM compliant - I didn't mean to imply from the post title that they are not.]  [Also, I've omitted discussion of the court's jurisdictional analysis.  Note to self:  do not raise jurisdictional arguments in cases involving telecom/ISP defendants venued in the Eastern District of Virginia.  There's a whole lot of bad precedent.]