California declares war on the Kars4Kids earworm

The problem wasn’t that the money went somewhere; it was that the jingle strongly encouraged donors to imagine it going somewhere else.

In a rare triumph for both consumer protection law and everyone with functioning ears, a California judge has effectively told Kars4Kids that if it wants to keep blasting its psychic malware across the airwaves, it needs to stop being misleading about where the money goes.

Kars4Kids Chief Operating Officer Esti Landau testified that the charity’s “primary function” was to fund Oorah, which is dedicated to Jewish heritage summer camps in New York and New Jersey, per the court order. She also said that while 25% of the charity’s revenue comes from California, there are no programs in the state that benefit from Kars4Kids beyond a backpack drive “characterized as a branding exercise.”

Kids in need aren’t even really the target of the organization’s financial efforts. Instead, those go to 17- and 18-year-olds seeking gap-year trips to Israel and their families. Landau testified that $16.5 million even went to purchasing a building in Israel in 2022, and $437,000 was spent on “Middle East outreach.”

Orange County Superior Court Judge Gassia Apkarian found that the ads constituted false advertising because the commercials were “misleading by omission” since none of the information above was properly disclosed. While prospective donors could find this information online, the court order stated that the “primary call to action” was the phone number in the jingle. The court ruled that unfair competition laws were violated because “the harm of soliciting donations through intentional omissions outweighs any purported utility.”

SFGate

An additional and effective class action claim would be on behalf of everyone who involuntarily memorized that g-d phone number.