The Supreme Court Issues its Long Awaited Decision in Facebook and Clears up the Circuit Split on the Definition of an ATDS | Seyfarth Shaw LLP jdsupra.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from jdsupra.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
On December 9, 2020, the Eleventh Circuit affirmed the Northern District of Georgia’s dismissal of a putative class action alleging violations of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act.
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Will anything stop the continuing barrage of class action lawsuits under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA)? In 2020, TCPA lawsuits remained one of the most commonly-filed type of class action in federal courts across the country, and all signs indicate that the trend will continue in the year ahead. Yet potential changes loom on the horizon. The United States Supreme Court is poised to issue a decision that could dramatically impact hundreds of pending cases involving alleged autodialers and alter the TCPA landscape for good. New leadership at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) could revise or clarify TCPA rules, and courts across the country continue to grapple with various issues regarding the scope and potency of the statute. Here, we discuss the TCPA Top 5 issues for 2021.
Thursday, December 10, 2020
On Tuesday, December 8, 2020, the United States Supreme Court heard oral argument on the question of what type of dialing equipment qualifies as an “automatic telephone dialing system” (ATDS) under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA). The Court granted certiorari to resolve a split among the federal circuit courts of appeals that had construed the meaning of the term. The Ninth Circuit ruling on review had reaffirmed a broad definition of ATDS, but other recent decisions had construed the term more narrowly.
The plain language of the TCPA states that an ATDS is “equipment which has the capacity to store or produce telephone numbers to be called, using a random or sequential number generator; and to dial such numbers.” 47 U.S.C. § 227(a)(1). After the D.C. Circuit abrogated the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) rulings construing that language,