The order provides clarification on entities subject to the TCPA.
12/15/2020 8:30 AM
FCCNewsTCPAAdvocacy
The Federal Communications Commission issued an order on reconsideration Monday ruling that government contractors must have prior express consent before they contact consumers, according to a news release from the FCC.
The order stems from reconsideration of the Broadnet Declaratory Ruling and reverses the FCC’s previous order to the extent that it provided that a federal contractor making calls on behalf of the government was not a “person” subject to the restrictions in section 227(b)(1) of the TCPA.
“Today’s order reconsidered a 2016 interpretation of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act adopted by the prior FCC that allowed federal contractors to robocall consumers without their prior express consent. The order on reconsideration confirms that contractors working for federal, state, or local governments along with local governments themselves must obtain con
Supreme Court fight over outdated robocall statute has significant consequences | American Enterprise Institute aei.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from aei.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
On Dec. 8, 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court heard long-awaited oral argument in
Facebook v. Duguid on what constitutes an “automatic telephone dialing system” (ATDS) under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA).
As reported by McGuireWoods in March and July 2020, the definition of ATDS has created a circuit split, with some courts broadly interpreting ATDS to include any equipment that can automatically dial numbers from a list, and other courts narrowly interpreting ATDS to reach only equipment that uses a random or sequential number generator.
Given the unique remote format of the oral argument, each Supreme Court justice had equal time to address counsel for the parties. Though there is no way to predict how the court will ultimately rule, the justices’ questions appeared to favor a narrow reading of the ATDS definition, in part due to the “ill fit” between the statute and the current state of technology. This alert offers analysis of each justice’s reaction to
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As its name suggests, the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of
1991 ( TCPA ) was drafted, debated, passed, and signed
into law well before cell phones became ubiquitous. It is,
therefore, unsurprising that the statutory language of the TCPA
does not expressly state whether the law applies to text messages.
This was a subject of great interest in recent oral arguments
before the United States Supreme Court ( SCOTUS ) in
Facebook ). In
Facebook, several of SCOTUS s textualist Justices
wondered aloud whether the TCPA could or should apply to text
First Amendment News 281: Clearview face-recognition controversy continues privacy v. free speech
Clearview AI has hired Floyd Abrams, a top lawyer, to help fight claims that selling its data to law enforcement agencies violates privacy laws. . . . Litigation against the start-up “has the potential of leading to a major decision about the interrelationship between privacy claims and First Amendment defenses in the 21st century,” Mr. Abrams said in a phone interview. He said the underlying legal questions could one day reach the Supreme Court.
At the time of that post, Mr. Abrams told FAN that there “are ten cases in federal court, six in SDNY and four in the ND of Illinois. There is a case in the Vermont State Courts and one in the Illinois state courts by the ACLU.”