The Federal Communications Fee is pushing the Phone Client Safety Act’s one-to-one consent requirement to subsequent yr, resulting from an appeals courtroom ruling questioning the FCC’s definition of prior specific consent.
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The Federal Communications Fee is delaying the Phone Client Safety Act (TCPA)’s one-to-one consent requirement till 2026, due to a courtroom ruling towards the fee on Friday.
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The U.S. Court docket of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit dominated in favor of the Insurance coverage Advertising Coalition (IMC), which filed a petition in 2024 towards the FCC over the TCPA’s prior specific consent necessities.
Within the Act, the FCC requires entrepreneurs to get specific written consent from shoppers earlier than calling, texting, or utilizing auto-dialers to ship a prerecorded message. The FCC additionally axed the concept of broad consent for these calls, with the Act noting that buyers should present written consent for every firm that wishes to contact them. As soon as a shopper provides consent to an organization, the TCPA additionally says any future calls, texts, or automated messages have to be “logically and topically” associated to the unique cause they consented.
The IMC argued the FCC’s prior specific consent requirement “improperly differentiated” between telemarketing and promoting calls and non-telemarketing and non-advertising calls. The IMC additionally stated the TCPA’s definition of prior specific consent conflicts with the longstanding software of the rule and provides conflicting steerage on the requirement that every one calls to a shopper have to be “logically and topically” associated.
“By this Order, we postpone the efficient date for revisions to the [Second Text Blocking Report and Order] of the Fee’s guidelines by 12 months, to January 26, 2026, or till the date laid out in a Public Discover following a choice from the courtroom reviewing a problem to the brand new rule on the petition filed by the Insurance coverage Advertising Coalition (IMC), whichever is sooner,” Client and Governmental Affairs Bureau Performing Chief Eduard W. Bartholme III stated in an order on Friday. “We take this motion pursuant to our authority beneath part 10(d) of the Administrative Process Act as a result of we discover that justice requires postponement of the efficient date pending judicial evaluate of the adopted rule.”
“Significantly given the superior stage of the pending judicial continuing, it’s within the curiosity of justice to supply a restricted postponement of the efficient date of the rule to keep away from imposing new burdens on events whereas the courtroom is adjudicating IMC’s problem to the rule and to keep away from subjecting texters and callers appearing in good religion to the danger of getting to defend themselves towards non-public fits looking for statutory damages for a interval through which the rule continues to be present process judicial evaluate,” he added. “Additional, we discover that offering further time might facilitate the trade’s compliance with the rule if the courtroom upholds it.”
“After cautious evaluate and with the good thing about oral argument, we agree with IMC that the FCC exceeded its statutory authority beneath the TCPA as a result of the 2023 Order’s new consent restrictions impermissibly battle with the strange statutory that means of ‘prior specific consent,’” courtroom paperwork learn. “Accordingly, we grant IMC’s petition for evaluate, vacate Half III.D of the 2023 Order, and remand for additional proceedings.”
Though the FCC is holding off on the one-to-one consent requirement, that doesn’t imply corporations are off the hook.
They’ll nonetheless have to get specific written consent and supply a “clear and conspicuous” disclosure for robocalls and robotexts — or face steep penalties. In 2023, Keller Williams paid $40 million to settle a chilly name class motion lawsuit that claimed the franchisor’s brokers made unsolicited calls to shoppers, together with these on the nationwide Do Not Name record.
Electronic mail Marian McPherson
