Judge Jonathan E. Hawley, in the Central District of Illinois, dismissed federal claims under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) in a class action alleging unlawful telemarketing via text, finding that the relevant TCPA provisions do not explicitly cover text messages. The state law claim under Florida’s Telephone Solicitation Act (FTSA) remains, and the case was dismissed without prejudice.
The plaintiffs, representing a putative class, alleged that they received repeated telemarketing text messages and calls from a Florida-based medical services company, despite being on the National Do Not Call Registry or having requested that the company stop contacting them. The complaint asserted violations of the TCPA (Counts I-IV) and the FTSA (Count V), seeking monetary, injunctive, and declaratory relief.
The classes were defined as follows:
- Internal Do Not Call List Class: Individuals who received two or more text messages within a 12-month period after requesting no further contact.
- Do Not Call Registry Class: Individuals on the National Do Not Call Registry who received multiple messages or calls without consent.
- FTSA Class: Florida residents who received solicitation texts after opting out.
The Supreme Court very recently explained:
In an enforcement proceeding, a district court must independently determine for itself whether the agency’s interpretation of a statute is correct. District courts are not bound by the agency’s interpretation, but instead must determine the meaning of the law under ordinary principles of statutory interpretation, affording appropriate respect to the agency’s interpretation.
McLaughlin Chiropractic Assocs., Inc. v. McKesson Corp., 145 S. Ct. 2006, 2015 (2025) (citing Loper Bright Enters. v. Raimondo, 603 U.S. 369, 402 (2024)).4 Pursuant to McLaughlin and Loper Bright, the Court agrees with the Defendant that based on a plain reading of the TCPA and its implementing regulations, Section 227(c)(5) does not apply to text messages.
The central issue was whether the TCPA’s “Do Not Call” provisions (47 U.S.C. § 227(c) and related regulations) apply to text messages. The court made the following points:
- The statutory language of Section 227(c) and its implementing regulations refer only to “calls” or “telephone calls,” not “text messages” or “SMS messages.”
- The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has interpreted “calls” to include text messages under Section 227(b), but not under Section 227(c), which governs the National Do Not Call Registry and related consumer protections.
- When the TCPA was enacted in 1991, “telephone call” would not have been understood to include text messages, which did not exist at that time.
- It is Congress’s role—not the judiciary’s—to update statutes to address new technologies.
JOSEPH JONES, SETH STEIDINGER, & NATASHA KOLLER, on behalf of themselves & all others similarly situated, Plaintiffs, v. BLACKSTONE MEDICAL SERVICES, LLC, Defendant., No. 1:24-CV-01074-JEH-RLH, 2025 WL 2042764 (C.D. Ill. July 21, 2025).
