On April 1, 2021, the Supreme Court of the United States issued its highly anticipated decision in the Facebook Inc. v. Duguid matter.  In a unanimous decision delivered by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the Supreme Court addressed a hotly debated issue of statutory construction regarding the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (“TCPA”), and reversed the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit’s decision holding that Facebook, Inc. (“Facebook”) used a text-message notification system that met the TCPA’s definition of an “autodialer.”  In short, the Court held that Facebook’s notification equipment did not meet the definition of an autodialer because it does not use a random or sequential number generator.  The Court rejected Plaintiff Noah Duguid’s more broad interpretation of the statute, noting that if an autodialer were any device that had the capacity to dial random numbers, the TCPA would encompass any equipment that stores and dials telephone numbers, such as a modern smartphone.
Continue Reading SCOTUS Issues Anticipated Decision in Facebook, Inc. v. Duguid And Unanimously Reverses Ninth Circuit, Holding Facebook’s Text Notification System Did Not Meet the TCPA’s Definition of An Autodialer Because It Did Not Use A Random Or Sequential Number Generator

On Friday, March 16, 2018, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia issued its long-awaited ruling in ACA International et al. v. FCC (see attached). The petition before the court challenged aspects of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) Omnibus Declaratory Ruling and Order issued by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)

A recent opinion from the Southern District of California suggests that now there is no bright-line rule regarding what qualifies as human intervention for purposes of determining whether an autodialer was used. In denying a motion for summary judgment filed by Yahoo, the court found that:

“there are genuine issues of fact as to whether