As we previously noted, the Pennsylvania state legislature passed a bill enacting new restrictions on robocalls. Now governor Tom Wolf has signed that bill into law.

To reiterate our previous coverage, the most notable aspect of this law is the provision that eliminates the 5 year time limit on the state’s Do Not Call (DNC) list—meaning callers must honor state DNC requests indefinitely, unless callers voluntarily remove themselves from the list. However, the other restrictions are also important for anyone calling Pennsylvanians.

Those restrictions include:

• allowing businesses to sign up for the state DNC list
• new disclosure requirements for robocalls—namely that robocalls must include opt-out information at the beginning of calls
• a prohibition against sending solicitous calls on legal holidays

The legal holidays covered by this prohibition are as follows: New Year's Day, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, President’s Day, Good Friday, Memorial Day, Flag Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Columbus Day, Election Day, Veteran’s Day, Thanksgiving Day, and Christmas Day.

There are some exceptions to the prohibition against calls on holidays. Calls placed on behalf of non-profits, on behalf of a political candidate/party, for the purposes of debt collection, and to those with whom the caller has an established business relationship (EBR) are not included within the bill’s definition of a “telephone solicitation call.”