Insights / articlesInsights
Insights / articles

Published Article

Constitutionality of the TCPA Between 2015 and 2020

Read Time: 1 min

As always, the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) is subject to litigation throughout the country. Recently, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a decision in Facebook, Inc. v. Duguid, No. 19-511 (U.S. 2021), regarding the definition of an automated telephone dialing system (ATDS). Although the Facebook case, which was decided in April 2021, has received the majority of attention, another question has arisen regarding whether the TCPA was constitutional between the enactment of the government-debt exception in 2015 and the Barr v. American Ass’n of Political Consultants, Inc. (AAPC) decision on July 6, 2020. 140 S. Ct. 2335, 207 L. Ed. 2d 784 (2020).

On July 6, 2020, in a plurality opinion, the U.S. Supreme Court decided AAPC. Since then, this decision has already led to a split in authority regarding the effect of the severance of the government-debt exception on robocalls made to cellular phones by nongovernment debt collectors from November 2, 2015, to July 6, 2020.

Gregg D. Stevens (Dallas) and Stefanie L. Deka (Cleveland) co-authored an article regarding whether the TCPA was constitutional between the enactment of the government-debt exception in 2015 and the AAPC decision in 2020 in the ABA Litigation Section’s Consumer Litigation, Volume 20, Number 1, Summer 2021.

Read the full article here.

Insights

In the Media

The Humble Beginnings and Wild Evolution of the TCPA

February 7, 2022

Member Joseph Apatov (Fort Lauderdale) was featured on the Emerging Litigation podcast discussing the evolution of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) with Tom Hagy, editor of the Journal of Emerging Issues in Litigation.

In the Media

Supreme Court decision provides clarity on TCPA

April 8, 2021

Attorneys Joe Apatov (Ft. Lauderdale) and Aaron Kouhoupt (Cleveland) were quoted in an April 7 article in Auto Finance News detailing the specifics of the Supreme Court's decision in the Facebook v. Duguid case.

Alert

SCOTUS clarifies “autodialer” definition in Facebook TCPA decision

April 6, 2021

On April 1, 2021, the Supreme Court held in a 9-0 decision that an “automatic telephone dialing system” is a device that has the capacity either to store a telephone number using a random or sequential generator, or to produce a telephone number using a random or sequential number generator. As a quick refresher: the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) restricts certain calls made by an “auto dialer,” which the TCPA defines as equipment which has the capacity to store or produce telephone numbers to be called, using a random or sequential number generator and to dial such numbers.”

Published Article

Two TCPA updates that auto finance companies need to know

March 17, 2021

The Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), and the barrage of litigation that stems from its various interpretations, is always in the news. In fact, there is so much change that it’s often hard for a casual follower to filter out the news from noise. For example, court cases discussing the constitutionality of the TCPA as a resultMore

Podcasts

Podcast: Is the TCPA Unconstitutional?

March 16, 2021

The Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) is always the subject of litigation. The United States Supreme Court recently ruled that the government debt exception, which was added to the statute in 2015, was unconstitutional. Can the Court's recent ruling be interpreted to mean the entirety of the TCPA has been unconstitutional since 2015?