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Updated: FCC Adopts New Guidance on the TCPA
Practical Law Legal Update 8-616-6467 (Approx. 5 pages)
Updated: FCC Adopts New Guidance on the TCPA
by Practical Law Commercial
| Published on 14 Jul 2015 • USA (National/Federal) |
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has recently adopted a declaratory ruling and order to address how the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 (TCPA) protects consumers from unwanted robocalls and spam texts. This declaratory ruling and order addresses almost two dozen petitions that the FCC has received regarding the TCPA.
On June 18, 2015, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced that it has adopted a declaratory ruling and order to resolve almost two dozen petitions from businesses and attorneys general that requested guidance on how the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) applies to robocalls and spam texts (FCC Strengthens Consumer Protections Against Unwanted Calls and Texts, (F.C.C. June 18, 2015)). The TCPA requires prior express written consent for both:
- Non-emergency autodialed, prerecorded or artificial voice calls to wireless phone numbers.
- Prerecorded telemarketing calls to residential landline numbers.
In this declaratory ruling and order, the FCC offers guidance about the scope of the TCPA's protection for consumers. Among other things, the FCC states that:
- Service providers can offer consumers technologies and other market-based solutions to block robocalls.
- Consumers can revoke their consent to receive robocalls and robotexts in any reasonable way at any time.
- If a phone number has been reassigned to a new person, companies must stop calling the number after one call.
- The TCPA's content-based protections apply equally to texts and voice calls for wireless numbers.
- A consumer whose name is in the contacts list of an acquaintance's phone does not consent to receive robocalls from third-party applications that the acquaintance downloads.
- The TCPA's autodialer prohibitions apply to equipment that a party uses to send Internet-to-phone text messages.
The declaratory ruling and order also describes the very limited and specific exemptions to the TCPA's rules against robocalls and autodialers. The TCPA permits parties to send certain financial alerts or healthcare messages, such as calls or texts to alert consumers to possible fraud on their bank accounts or remind them of important medication refills, without obtaining prior consent. However, this exception does not apply to other types of financial or healthcare calls, such as marketing or debt collection calls, and consumers can opt out of these permitted calls and texts at any time.
For more information on the TCPA, see Practice Note, Direct Marketing: Telephone Consumer Protection Act and Article, Understanding Federal Telemarketing Regulations.