At the Federal Communication Commission’s (“FCC”) June 8 Open Meeting, the Commissioners voted to adopt a new Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (“Notice”) designed to clarify and expand upon the ability of consumers to decide...more
The Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 (TCPA) restricts many types of calls to residential and wireless telephone numbers if they are made without the prior express consent of the called party or a statutory exemption...more
On November 21, 2022, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) released a Declaratory Ruling and Order (Declaratory Ruling), in which it determined that “ringless voicemail” to wireless phones requires prior consumer...more
For those regularly monitoring the FCC’s various TCPA dockets, you now have a new docket to follow: CG Docket No. 21-402. The FCC announced on September 27, 2022 that all Commissioners had voted to commence a new robotext...more
On July 12, 2022, Representatives Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-Ill., and Katie Porter, D-Calif. introduced H.R. 8334 in the U.S. House of Representatives, which was referred to the Committee on Energy and Commerce. The bill would...more
Reacting quickly to a joint request by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) (collectively, the Health Agencies) last Thursday, the FCC released a Public...more
5/5/2022
/ Auto-Dialed Calls ,
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) ,
Comment Period ,
Consent ,
Coronavirus/COVID-19 ,
Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) ,
FCC ,
Medicaid ,
Public Comment ,
Public Notice ,
Robocalling ,
Sovereign Immunity ,
TCPA ,
Text Messages
The FCC’s TCPA dockets did not witness many developments from the beginning of 2022 until February. However, beginning in February and into March, Chairwoman Rosenworcel’s office and the Enforcement Bureau were busy...more
After years of discussion and planning, the FCC’s Reassigned Numbers Database opened for commercial use on November 1, 2021. Now business callers can register for a paid subscription with the FCC’s designated Administrator,...more
The Sixth Circuit recently became the first federal court of appeals to weigh in on whether plaintiffs can bring TCPA claims for conduct occurring between November 2015 and July 2020—the respective dates on which the...more
The FCC recently announced a public comment period for a new Petition for Declaratory Ruling that seeks to have the FCC “clarify that delivery of a voice message directly to a voicemail box through ringless voicemail (RVM)...more
The Federal Communications Commission has proposed to slap a Virginia political firm and two of its principals with a $5,134,500 fine for placing over one thousand prerecorded phone calls to cell phones across the country...more
After adopting orders reflecting the majority of implementation deadlines set by the TRACED Act and the Supreme Court’s highly anticipated TCPA decision interpreting the statutory definition of automatic telephone dialing...more
The Southern District of California recently dismissed the TCPA case Hildre v. Heavy Hammer, Inc., No. 3:20-cv-00236, 2021 WL 734431 (S.D. Cal. Feb. 25, 2021), for the plaintiff’s failure to adequately allege that the...more
The TRACED Act’s December 30, 2020 deadline was not the end of the FCC’s recent series of actions to bring more clarity to certain forms of TCPA exemptions. Most recently, on January 15, 2021, the FCC issued a Declaratory...more
Some welcome the New Year with new goals and new plans while others – the FCC, in particular, welcomes the New Year by wrapping up TCPA rulemakings and issuing other rulings. As expected, a number of TRACED Act items were...more
The FCC in 2016 determined that the federal government was not a “person” subject to the TCPA, and that by extension, federal contractors working within the scope of their delegated authority were also not bound by TCPA...more
Over the years, one of the biggest challenges many businesses face when assessing TCPA risks posed by a new calling or texting campaign has been determining whether the proposed use case can defensibly rely on one of the...more
On September 21, the FCC’s Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau issued a declaratory ruling clarifying that businesses advertised via fax should not face “sender liability” for unsolicited faxes sent without prior...more
In a Public Notice issued July 28, 2020, the FCC confirmed that the TCPA’s safe harbor for calls or text messages made for “emergency purposes” applies to calls and text messages made by or on behalf of health care entities...more
The FCC’s Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau last week issued a declaratory ruling resolving a long-pending Petition on the question of whether certain healthcare-related calls, given their significance and value for...more
The Eleventh Circuit recently affirmed the district court’s summary judgment ruling that a defendant’s calls did not violate the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (“TCPA”) because consumers cannot unilaterally revoke consent...more
The United States District Court for the District of Connecticut recently granted a Defendant’s motion to dismiss Plaintiffs’ TCPA claims because Plaintiffs failed to adequately allege facts supporting an inference that...more
On March 30, 2020, the American Bankers Association (“ABA”) and several other associations of banks and credit unions (together, “petitioners”) effectively asked the FCC to exempt all COVID-related calls and texts to...more
4/10/2020
/ American Bankers Association ,
ATDS ,
Auto-Dialed Calls ,
Cell Phones ,
Coronavirus/COVID-19 ,
Debt Collection ,
Declaratory Rulings ,
FCC ,
Federal Contractors ,
Prior Express Consent ,
Reassigned Phone Numbers ,
Revocation ,
Robocalling ,
TCPA ,
Telecommunications ,
Telemarketing ,
Text Messages ,
Waivers
The U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts recently granted a TCPA defendant’s motion to dismiss, in part, because the plaintiff failed to allege plausible facts supporting an assertion that the defendant,...more
Acknowledging that “effective communications with the American public” are “a critical component” of efforts to slow the spread of the coronavirus, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) released, on its own motion, a...more