Did A Prolific TCPA Plaintiffs' Attorney Just Argue That The Statute Does Not Regulate Text Messaging? The Hearing Transcript Says "Yes."
by Daniel Blynn
For years, the plaintiffs' bar has been filing Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) class actions alleging the receipt of unsolicited, autodialed text messages. But the TCPA's autodialer prohibition explicitly refers to "calls," not text messages, whereas other provisions of the statute, namely the Truth in Caller ID Act, expressly extend to both "text messaging service[s]." In fact, that section of the TCPA even includes a definition for "text message."
Nonetheless, based on dicta from a decade-old Supreme Court decision addressing whether federal courts have concurrent jurisdiction with state courts over TCPA claims, Mims v. Arrow Financial Services, LLC, the plaintiffs' bar regularly includes in its autodialer complaints an allegation that text messages are calls for purposes of applying and construing the TCPA. During the December 2020 oral argument before the Supreme Court in Facebook, Inc. v. Duguid, Justice Clarence Thomas questioned "why a text message is considered a call under the TCPA" in the first place. But the issue was not before the Supreme Court; nor did the Court address it in its decision.