Comments to the FCC on the Telephone Consumer Protection Act
Published
February 05, 2020
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and a broad coalition of industry groups urged the FCC to promptly clarify the Telephone Consumer Protection Act's (TCPA) definition of "automatic telephone dialing system" (ATDS) by acting on a long-pending Petition for Declaratory Ruling. The coalition argued that the FCC's inaction following the D.C. Circuit's 2018 ACA International decision has created a confusing patchwork of conflicting court interpretations, harming both businesses and consumers — particularly by discouraging legitimate, time-sensitive communications like prescription reminders, fraud alerts, and utility outage notifications. The letter further contended that the current legal uncertainty has fueled a wave of abusive TCPA litigation targeting good-faith businesses, with average settlement costs of $6.6 million per case, and urged the FCC to adopt the straightforward statutory interpretation that an ATDS must actually use a random or sequential number generator to dial numbers without human intervention — consistent with the plain text of the law and the D.C. Circuit's guidance.
