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ARTICLE · 12 NOVEMBER 2026

Indiana Joins The Email Subject Line Litigation Wave

Kelley Drye & Warren LLP
Kelley Drye & Warren LLP
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Kelley Drye & Warren LLP

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Indiana joins Washington, California, and Maryland in becoming a hotspot for email marketing litigation under state anti-spam laws. A federal court recently ruled that Ulta Beauty's promotional emails with subject lines advertising "free" gifts and percentage discounts could be considered misleading under Indiana's Deceptive Commercial Electronic Mail Act, allowing the case to proceed despite the full terms being disclosed in the email body.

United StatesConsumer Protection
Gonzalo E. Mon
Gonzalo E. Mon

We’ve written extensively about the wave of email marketing lawsuits in Washington and noted that we were starting to see ripples in other states, including California and Maryland. (Read my Law360 article if you need to get up to speed.) Now, marketers can add Indiana to the list of states they need to worry about. 

Similar to Washington’s Commercial Electronic Mail Act (“CEMA”), the Indiana Deceptive Commercial Electronic Mail Act (“IDCEMA”) generally prohibits companies from sending an email that “contains false or misleading information in the subject line” to an email address the company knew or had reason to know belonged to an Indiana resident. And like CEMA before its recent amendment, the statute provides for $500 in damages for each violating email, and recipients don’t have to prove they lost any money.

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