The US Supreme Court upheld a ban on automated calls to mobile phones, rejecting a push by political consultants to reverse the law which argued it was unconstitutional.

In a ruling, the Supreme Court determined the amendment was an “unconstitutional excep­tion to the law”, and rectified it by “invalidating the 2015 government-debt exception and sev­ering it from the remainder of the statute”, but reaffirmed the ban is not unconstitutional.

The American Association of Political Consultants (AAPC) and three other groups had argued the ban on robocalls through the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 was unconstitutional due to the court making an exception for the US government debt collection moves.

AAPC labelled the move as content-based speech restriction, a key reason to why the ban should be lifted.

In its ruling, the Supreme Court said US citizens were “largely united in their disdain for robocalls”, noting the government received 3.7 million complaints about them in 2019.

He explained calls regarding government debt “is legal”, while those seeking donations to political campaigns are not: “that is about as content-based as it gets.”