Call me maybe? A TCPA update

Greetings Compliance friends!

Compliance with the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) often causes headaches for credit unions across the country due to the fear of litigation for any perceived or technical violation associated with contacting their own members. The TCPA requires credit unions to obtain the member’s prior written consent to receive calls in a variety of circumstances, including all calls (or text messages) made to a member’s cell phone using an “autodialer.” See, 47 C.F.R. § 64.1200. At the heart of the issue is the definition of an “autodialer,” and whether that definition applies to only those systems with a random or sequential number generator, or to all telephone systems with the capacity to store and produce telephone numbers.

The TCPA originally passed in 1991 to address nuisance and privacy concerns associated with automated and prerecorded phone calls. The TCPA has been interpreted several times since, including in 2015 where the FCC adopted a broad interpretation of “autodialer” to include any dialing system with the “capacity to store or produce telephone numbers” even if that system lacks the “present ability” to autodial. See, FCC Order 15-72.

Last time we blogged about the TCPA, we discussed the recent D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals decision in ACA Int’l v. Federal Communications Commission (ACA Int’l) which unanimously set aside the interpretation from the 2015 FCC Order, explaining that this interpretation “would appear to subject ordinary calls from any conventional smartphone to the Act’s coverage, an unreasonably expansive interpretation of the statute.” In doing so, the court noted that the procedural approach taken by the FCC did not clearly articulate a comprehensible standard for what constitutes an autodialer as required by the Administrative Procedure Act’s arbitrary and capricious standard.

 

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