A California judge banned the ‘annoying’ Kars4Kids jingle of a New Jersey-based nonprofit

Californians may have heard the lyrics to this absolute earworm for the last time: 1-877-KARS-4-KIDS, K-A-R-S KARS-4-KIDS.

That’s because a judge ruled this month that Kars4Kids, the New Jersey-based nonprofit, violated the state’s false advertising and unfair competition laws. In turn, the company is barred from broadcasting its ads in the Golden State.

Kars4Kids and its sister organization Oorah are based in Lakewood, an Ocean County township with a high Orthodox Jewish population that is an hour and a half outside of Philadelphia.

For two decades, the ad — which has featured different groups of children over the years but the same annoying jingle — has played over TV and radio ads, urging consumers to donate their cars, you know, 4 the kids. As elucidated by the New York Post in a 2020 headline: “Kars4Kids ad gets new kids, but song remains as annoying as ever.”

A years-long lawsuit between California resident Bruce Puterbaugh and Oorah, Kars4Kid’s sister organization, claimed his donation didn’t support local children, but rather, a religious organization.

Kars4Kids proceeds primarily fund the Jewish group, Oorah, which provides programs including adult-matchmaking services, Birthright trips to Israel, and New York summer camps.

Puterbaugh filed his lawsuit in 2021 after hearing the jingle and donating his car. That civil case also triggered a more recent federal class action lawsuit filed in November, which is pending in the Northern District of California.

Puterbaugh‘s lawsuit claimed that Kars4Kids was deceptive about its mission statement, suggesting the proceeds from donated cars would benefit “children, especially needy or underprivileged children.” On May 8, a judge agreed.

If Oorah wants to continue running the Kars4Kids jingle in California, Judge Gassia Apkarian of the Superior Court of California in Orange County wrote in her decision, the organization would need to add “an express, audible disclosure of its religious affiliation and the geographic location of its primary beneficiaries and the age of the beneficiaries, specifying whether they aim for children or families, or both.”

Court documents show Kars4Kids’ chief operating officer, Esti Landau, acknowledged the ads don’t go into the charity’s specific nature, the New York Times reported. According to Landau, Kars4Kids sends about $45 million a year (60% of the money it raises) to Oorah, which operates within the same Lakewood office. The other 30% is spent on advertising and 6% on administrative costs. The judge noted that Oorah also spent about $16.5 million on purchasing a building in Israel.

Landau testified that Kars4Kids helps a wide range of children. The organization said it plans to seek a stay on the ruling and is appealing.

“We believe this decision is deeply flawed, ignores the facts, and misapplies the law,” the organization said in a statement sent to multiple news outlets. “It’s well known that we are a Jewish organization and our website makes it abundantly clear.”

Still, it’s not the first time Kars4Kids’ advertising has been scrutinized.

In 2009, the organization settled with the attorneys general of Oregon and Pennsylvania for $130,000 over misleading advertising claims. The states argued that the infamous jingle failed to disclose that the donated funds were supporting a religious outreach program, not just kids, broadly.

In Oregon, investigators deemed a “free vacation” voucher that Kars4Kids offered its donors to be a deceptive marketing tactic, requiring people to sit through lengthy timeshare presentations.

Astonishingly, the California judge who ruled on Puterbaugh’s case to ban the ad within the state hadn’t heard the ad before.

“Do you not have a television?” Puterbaugh’s lawyer, Anthony G. Graham, asked Judge Apkarian, according to the transcript.

“Not the television I watch,” the judge said.