We are pleased to present our latest edition of Telephone and Texting Compliance News, providing insights and news related to the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA). In this month's Regulatory Update, we discuss the potential implications to the FCC of President Trump's recent executive order directing all executive departments and agencies to pause currently pending proceedings and review any proposed or adopted rules not yet in effect. Although it is an independent agency, the FCC has voluntarily followed similar executive orders and presidential memoranda in the past. We also review three TCPA- and TRACED Act-related actions that appear to fall within the scope of the executive order, including orders pertaining to third-party call authentication, Robocall Mitigation Database certification procedures for providers, and consumer revocation of consent to receive calls or texts.
In this month's Litigation Update, we cover the Eleventh Circuit's decision in Insurance Marketing Coalition v. FCC, which vacated the FCC's one-to-one consent rule just one business day before it was set to go into effect. The court held that the agency exceeded its statutory authority by interpreting "prior express consent" under the TCPA to require separate consent for each seller and for calls or texts to be "logically and topically associated" with the interaction that prompted the consumer's consent. Although it is unclear how, if at all, the FCC will respond to this development under the new administration, businesses can rely on pre-one-to-one consent standards when obtaining prior express written consent from consumers.
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