The TCPA in 2018: There and Back Again

Drinker Biddle held a half-day CLE to discuss recent developments with the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA).

The TCPA has been with us for more than 25 years. For much of that time, it was a little-known law that received little attention outside of small circles. But beginning in the 2010s—around the time the FCC adopted rules eliminating the established business relationship exemption and requiring prior written consent for all autodialed or prerecorded telemarketing calls—the TCPA went mainstream. The number of lawsuits exploded, growing from tens to hundreds to thousands in just a few years, and businesses from seemingly every sector found themselves named as defendants. Defendants hoping for relief from the FCC found instead an FCC interested in expanding the statute’s reach, which it tried to do in its Declaratory Ruling & Order of July 2015.

But 2018 appears to be different. In March, the D.C. Circuit invalidated key portions of the FCC’s July 2015 Declaratory Ruling & Order, and FCC Chairman Pai released a statement shortly thereafter agreeing with the D.C. Circuit’s reasoning. While not every decision supports a narrower application of the TCPA (the Ninth Circuit’s recent decision in Marks v. Crunch San Diego, for example), the FCC appears poised for the first time in many years to narrow its interpretation of the statute. That, of course, could cause Congress to revisit the scope of the statute as well.

Click here to view the agenda.

Drinker Biddle’s TCPA Team

Our TCPA Team consists of class action litigators and regulatory attorneys situated across the country. We regularly provide guidance on all aspects of compliance, advocate positions with regulators, and defend businesses in individual and putative class actions in courts nationwide. With extensive TCPA experience across a broad spectrum of platforms and industries, we can assemble an interdisciplinary team to handle virtually any matter.

Visit the team’s TCPA Blog, the defense bar’s pre-eminent public resource for analysis of TCPA-related litigation and regulatory developments.