On April 1st, the Supreme Court held 9-0, in
Facebook v. Duguid, that equipment
must be capable of random or sequential number generation in order
to qualify as an "automatic telephone dialing system"
under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act.
The Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 (TCPA), among
other things, restricts certain communications made with an
"automatic telephone dialing system" (ATDS). The TCPA
defines an ATDS as equipment that can both "store or produce
telephone numbers to be called, using a random or sequential number
generator," and dial those numbers. The interpretive question
before the Court was whether the phrase "using a random or