In
Facebook, Inc. v. Duguid, No. 19-511, slip op. (Apr. 1, 2021), the Supreme Court “friended” Facebook by holding that the social media platform’s login notification texts did not constitute an “automatic telephone dialing system” under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (“TCPA”). The Court narrowly interpreted the TCPA’s restrictions on use of automatic telephone dialing systems, which now unequivocally apply only to devices that use a “random or sequential number generator” to send calls or texts.
Quick Summary of the TCPA’s Autodialer Restriction
The TCPA was designed to safeguard consumer privacy by restricting telemarketing communications. The Act restricts telephone solicitations and the use of automated phone equipment and was signed into law in 1991 as a response to a growing rise in unregulated and harassing telemarketing calls and faxes. It was subsequently applied to text messages as the use of SMS became ubiquitous. The Act limits the use of
Thursday, April 22, 2021
At the beginning of April 2021, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled in favor of Facebook in
Facebook, Inc. v. Duguid, reversing the decision of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals , holding: “To qualify as an ‘automatic telephone dialing system’ under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), a device must have the capacity either to store a telephone number using a random or sequential number generator, or to produce a telephone number using a random or sequential number generator.” This is big news. This precedent will likely be relied on by other defendants in TCPA class action litigation to argue that the technology used to send text messages does not constitute an autodialer and,therefore, the TCPA does not apply.
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At the beginning of April 2021, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled in favor of Facebook in
Facebook, Inc. v. Duguid, reversing the decision of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals , holding: “To qualify as an ‘automatic telephone dialing system’ under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), a device must have the capacity either to store a telephone number using a random or sequential number generator, or to produce a telephone number using a random or sequential number generator.” This is big news. This precedent will likely be relied on by other defendants in TCPA class action litigation to argue that the technology used to send text messages does not constitute an autodialer and,therefore, the TCPA does not apply.
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To many, robocalls have become one of the more annoying aspects of modern communications. Last year, the United States Supreme Court noted that in 2019 the federal government received 3.7 million complaints about automated calls. Now, in
Facebook, Inc. v. Noah Duguid, et al., 592 U. S. (2021), a long-awaited decision intended “to resolve a conflict among the Courts of Appeals regarding whether an autodialer must have the capacity to generate random or sequential phone numbers” to violate the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 (TCPA), the Supreme Court of the United States has answered with a clear and unambiguous “yes.”
The United States Supreme Court recently issued its long-awaited opinion clarifying what qualifies as an “autodialer” and is therefore governed by the Telephone Consumer Protection Act.