ACA International Lauds DC Circuit Reversals of FCC 2015 TCPA Robocall Order

and careful consideration of the arguments the credit and collection industry made," said CEO Mark Neeb: The ruling "supports legitimate, law-abiding businesses and recognizes that technological advancements in the ways people communicate are good for society.” The FCC's Republican majority and industry parties had also praised the unanimous court ruling overturning smartphone and reassigned-number decisions of the 2015 order while affirming an agency standard for revoking consumer consent and the scope of an exemption "for time-sensitive healthcare calls" (see 1803160053). A Wiley Rein blog post of takeaways (it also did a ruling overview) said the court "signaled that it would be receptive to an FCC construction of the TCPA’s autodialing prohibitions that potentially would exclude from TCPA liability calls made using a wide variety of technologies that the FCC’s prior approach had included, including predictive dialers, preview dialers, or other dialing mechanisms involving human intervention." Attorneys Scott Delacourt and Eve Reed said of the reassigned numbers reversal: "This ruling is also potentially significant, in that it rejects the idea that calling parties should be deemed to know that they have called a reassigned number even if a single call does not provide them with actual notice that reassignment has occurred. The Court suggested that the FCC has identified a path forward on reassigned numbers with its proposal for a reassigned number database." On a reasonable opt-out standard, they wrote: "Although affirming the FCC, the Court’s ruling should provide some protection to callers from consumers who choose 'unconventional' methods of expressing their desire to opt-out of receiving autodialed calls where user-friendly means are available." Mozilla Fellow Gigi Sohn tweeted the ruling "demonstrates mostly how outdated the law is. Does Congress have the guts 2 update it?"