San Francisco's board of supervisors will vote next week on legislation that would create an opt-in system for phone books, in which residents who wanted to receive Yellow Pages would have to request them from phone book companies. Currently, San Francisco's 800,000 residents receive 1.6 million phone books a year, whether they want them or not.

The opt-in program would be much tougher than Seattle's opt-out program, which will require residents to put their name on an opt-out registry if they don't want to receive phone books, placing the burden on residents, not phone-book companies. Even that less onerous law is being challenged by three yellow-pages companies, which argue that the law violates their corporate right to free speech. They point to an industry-run opt-out system called yellowpagesoptout.com, which many (including city council member Mike O'Brien, who sponsored the opt-out law) have said doesn't actually stem the flow of unwanted junk to their doorsteps.

In statement, Neg Norton, head of the Yellow Pages Association, said reducing the number of phone books residents receive would put jobs at risk---both those who work for yellow pages companies and the businesses that advertise in phone books, "plac[ing] an undue burden on local business owners trying to make ends meet." Norton also trotted out the First Amendment argument again, saying that the yellow pages companies are protected under freedom of the press like any other publication.

In a response to the yellow-page companies' lawsuits, the city of Seattle argued that the law merely gives citizens the right to say no to “voluminous unwanted commercial speech that otherwise would be delivered to their doors. The Constitution does not give Plaintiffs the right to impose their publications on those who do not wish to receive it.”