Unwanted Facebook Messages Don’t Justify Anti-Robocall Class Action Lawsuit, Supreme Court Rules
A proposed class action lawsuit accusing Facebook of violating a federal anti-robocall law may not go forward because the social media company’s unwanted text messages are not covered under federal law, the Supreme Court ruled this morning.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote the unanimous decision for the high court in Facebook Inc. v. Duguid, court file 19-511, which was decided April 1. Justice Samuel Alito filed a separate opinion concurring in the judgment.
The case concerns a federal law that imposes penalties of up to $1,500 for each unwanted call or text. The prohibition on such calls applies to dialing systems that can “store or produce telephone numbers to be called, using a random or sequential number generator.”
USA TODAY
WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court unanimously sided with social media giant Facebook on Thursday in a case that questioned whether the company s automated text alerts violated the nation s 30-year-old ban on robocalls.
Congress approved the Telephone Consumer Protection Act in 1991 to restrict telemarketing. The law, signed by President George H.W. Bush in the era of dial-up internet, regulated devices that could store and dial telephone numbers.
But the Supreme Court, in an opinion written by Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor, overruled the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit and concluded that an automatic telephone dialing system has the capacity to store or produce telephone number to be called, using a random or sequential generator, and to dial those numbers.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday sided with Facebook's argument that the Telephone Consumer Protection Act narrowly covers only random-fired calls and texts to cellphones, in a ruling that's expected to significantly reduce the swell of class action litigation that's emerged under the statute.
The Supreme Court on Thursday sided with Facebook in a lawsuit over unwanted text notifications it sent, rejecting a claim that the messages violated the
SCOTUS Facebook TCPA Ruling natlawreview.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from natlawreview.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.