Is T-Mobile USA blocking texts over process or medical marijuana?

T-Mobile USA Inc.’s customers might want to mind their P’s and Q’s next time they get the urge to send a missive in the form of a text message or text under the influence.
The nation’s fourth-largest carrier in terms of subscribers argued in federal court earlier this week that it has the right to choose when and if text messages get delivered at all. Brought into court via a lawsuit filed by EZ Texting after it blocked short code services for the company, T-Mobile USA argued that SMS is not beholden to the same “must carry” requirements as phone calls and maintained it has the right to effectively approve or deny each of its partner’s clients.
In a court filing obtained by Wired (PDF) in New York, T-Mobile USA wrote that it “has discretion to require pre-approval for any short-code marketing campaigns run on its network, and to enforce its guidelines by terminating programs for which a content provider failed to obtain the necessary approval.” This step helps “protect the carrier and its customers from potentially illegal, fraudulent, or offensive marketing campaigns conducted on its network,” the carrier added.
In this case, T-Mobile USA’s feathers were ruffled when EZ Texting signed up a California-based service that provides users with the location of legal medical marijuana dispensaries. The carrier doesn’t clarify whether or not it would have approved the service anyway, but it did release a statement claiming that the content provided by EZ Texting clients had “nothing do to” with its decision to block the service.
For its part, EZ Texting disputes that claim and says T-Mobile USA was singing another tune when it began blocking service to EZ Texting’s clients. It writes that T-Mobile USA’s latest reasoning provided in court is “inconsistent with the reasons that were communicated to EZ Texting when T-Mobile began its unlawful blocking. T-Mobile admits that it is blocking all text messages exchanged between its customers and EZ Texting’s customers. T-Mobile now claims that it is blocking EZ Texting because we didn’t follow some unidentified ‘process’ to T-Mobile’s private satisfaction. In any event, T-Mobile’s reason for blocking EZ Texting is irrelevant as T-Mobile has no right to block EZ Texting in the first place. One thing is for sure, however, T-Mobile has never stated that any of its customers have ever complained about text messages from EZ Texting. That’s because T-Mobile’s customers want to exchange text messages with EZ Texting’s customers. Consumers have a right to exchange text messages with whomever they like, just like any other type of call.”