Tennessee high court: BellSouth must allow competitor logos on directories

By The Associated Press

07.11.02

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NASHVILLE, Tenn. — BellSouth cannot prevent other local telephone service companies from adding their logos to the covers of Tennessee white-page phone directories published by its sister company, the state Supreme Court ruled unanimously yesterday.

The ruling overturns a decision by the state Court of Appeals that the Tennessee Regulatory Authority had exceeded its statutory authority by ordering BellSouth Advertising and Publishing Corp. to include the names of two competing telecommunications companies — AT&T and Nextlink — on the cover of the BellSouth Telecommunications Inc. directories. The appeals court also had said that the TRA's order violated the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment protections against "compelled speech."

But Supreme Court Justice Adolpho A. Birch Jr. wrote that the Legislature explicitly gave the TRA broad powers to oversee public utilities such as BellSouth, which is required by law to provide a white-pages directory in its market areas.

Birch wrote that the TRA's decisions "do not impose an inordinate burden on BellSouth" and that "informing consumers about their choices in the local telecommunications service market is a fundamental aspect of promoting free competition.

"Moreover, the government's chosen means to advance its goals, the requirement that logos of competing telecommunications service providers be displayed on equal footing with BellSouth's logo, does not substantially affect BellSouth's ability to communicate its own speech to customers in the market," Birch wrote.

BellSouth Advertising & Publishing Corp. is an arm of Atlanta-based BellSouth Corp. created to publish both white- and yellow-page telephone directories. BellSouth Telecommunications is the subsidiary that supplies local phone service.