DC Circuit Reverses FCC 2015 Robocalling Order's Rulings on Smartphones, Reassigned Numbers
Federal judges partially upheld and partially overturned an FCC robocalling order that sought to clarify Telephone Consumer Protection Act restrictions on using automated dialing devices to make uninvited calls. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit upheld the 2015 declaratory ruling's revocation approach, under which parties can revoke consent "through any reasonable means clearly expressing a desire to receive no further messages from the caller," said the opinion Friday of Judge Sri Srinivasan in ACA International v. FCC, No. 15-1211. "We also sustain the scope of the agency’s exemption for time-sensitive healthcare calls."
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The panel set aside the FCC's "effort to clarify the types of calling equipment that fall within the TCPA’s restrictions," said Friday's opinion. "The Commission’s understanding would appear to subject ordinary calls from any conventional smartphone to the Act’s coverage, an unreasonably expansive interpretation of the statute. We also vacate the agency’s approach to calls made to a phone number previously assigned to a person who had given consent but since reassigned to another (nonconsenting) person. The Commission concluded that calls in that situation violate the TCPA, apart from a one-call safe harbor, regardless of whether the caller has any awareness of the reassignment. We determine that the agency’s one-call safe harbor, at least as defended in the order, is arbitrary and capricious."
After oral argument was held in October 2016, the opinion had been long awaited. ACA and FCC representatives said they couldn't comment right away.