Telephone and Texting Compliance News — September 2024

We are pleased to present our latest edition of Telephone and Texting Compliance News, providing insights and news related to the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA). In this month’s Regulatory Update, we discuss a Report and Order the FCC was set to consider at its September 26 meeting that will instead be circulated to commissioners for individual voting. The Report and Order encompasses a draft Eighth Report and Order that would expand and add call-blocking requirements for some providers and a Third Report and Order that would impose new text message blocking obligations on originating providers and require e-mail-to-text to be an opt-in service. However, as drafted, the Report and Order would not require providers to offer call or text blocking based on analytics. Nor would it require the display of caller name information when caller ID has been authenticated on a consumer device or impose authentication and traceback requirements for text messages.

In this month’s Litigation Update, we cover a Florida federal court’s dismissal of a TCPA class action involving a text message and calls stemming from the plaintiff’s disclosure of her phone number during a store survey. The plaintiff, who apparently completed the survey to get a chance to win a gift card, claimed her number was registered on the National Do Not Call (DNC) Registry. In a significant win for TCPA defendants, the court held that the plaintiff had given prior express permission by providing her phone number and agreeing to the terms presented. In its analysis, the court concluded that claims based on TCPA language and its regulations regulating calls made to numbers on the DNC Registry do not require the same level of written consent required for claims premised on language about advertisements.

If you have suggestions for topics you’d like us to feature in this newsletter, or any questions about the content in this issue, please feel free to reach out to an attorney on Mintz’s TCPA and Consumer Calling Practice team.

In This Edition

Regulatory Update

• Federal Communications Commission to Consider New Call and Text Blocking Rules, Expand Other Requirements

Litigation Update

• Florida Federal Court Upholds Prior Express Invitation and Draws Distinction to Section 227(b)

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