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On April 1, 2021, the United States Supreme Court issued a long-awaited landmark decision that finally resolves a deep split of authority in the Circuit Courts of Appeal regarding the definition of an autodialer under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA). In a unanimous opinion, the justices overturned a Ninth Circuit ruling that broadly defined the type of automatic telephone dialing system (ATDS) prohibited by the TCPA. See Facebook, Inc. v. Duguid, Case No. 19-511 (2021).
While the TCPA defines an ATDS as equipment that has the capacity to store or produce telephone numbers to be called, using a random or sequential number generator, and to dial such numbers, the Ninth Circuit broadly construed that definition and held that it is enough for a phone to be able to dial stored numbers automatically to qualify as an ATDS under the TCPA which definition would encompass the capabilities of most smartphones. Gi