FCC Chairwoman Just Asked Congress to Expand the TCPA’s Autodialer Definition and its Worth Paying Attention to

So you might recall a few months ago there was a new bill introduced to expand the TCPA’s ATDS definition. My sources told me it was going nowhere. I told you it was going nowhere. And it went nowhere.

Well now, FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel just leaned in and requested a pack of Senators to look into doing precisely what the new bill would have accomplished–expanding the ATDS definition anew:

Fix the definition of autodialer: Because robotexts are neither prerecorded nor artificial voice calls, the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) only provides consumers protection from robotexts if they are sent from autodialers. Last year’s Supreme Court decision, Facebook v. Duguid, narrowed the definition of autodialer under the TCPA, resulting in the law only covering equipment that generates numbers randomly and sequentially. Consequently, equipment that simply uses lists to generate robotexts means that fewer robotexts may be subject to TCPA protections, and as a result, this decision may be responsible for the rise in robotexts over the past year.