The US Supreme Court has today decided Facebook, Inc. v. Duguid, narrowing the definition of an “automatic telephone dialing system” under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA).
Key points
- The Court unanimously held that a device must be able to store or produce numbers using a random or sequential number generator to qualify as an autodialer.
- Systems that simply dial numbers from a stored list are not autodialers on that basis alone.
- The ruling limits one of the main sources of TCPA class action litigation.
- Rules on prerecorded and artificial-voice calls, Do-Not-Call lists and state “mini-TCPA” laws still apply.
UK organisations running calling or text campaigns to US numbers still face significant statutory damages, so consent records and Do-Not-Call compliance remain essential.
Source: Facebook, Inc. v. Duguid opinion (US Supreme Court)
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