On July 21, 2025, the United States District Court for the Central District of Illinois issued an important decision for Telephone Consumer Protection Act ("TCPA") defendants. In Jones et al. v. Blackstone Medical Services, LLC ("Defendant"), Defendant was sued for allegedly sending Plaintiffs repeated telemarketing communications in violation of the National Do Not Call ("DNC") compliance provisions of the TCPA. Defendant filed a Motion to Dismiss, arguing that Plaintiffs failed to state a claim because only one communication was a live phone call; the rest were text messages. DNC requirements, Defendant argued, mandate that a consumer must receive at least two "telephone calls" within a 12-month period to create an actionable DNC claim. After careful consideration, the Court sided with Defendant, dismissing Plaintiffs' lawsuit without prejudice.
How Did the Court Interpret the Statutory DNC Requirements?
The Federal Communications Commission ("FCC") established the DNC registry pursuant to its authority to promulgate enabling regulations. As our readers are aware, the TCPA's DNC provisions provide, in relevant part that: "[n]o person or entity shall initiate any telephone solicitation to . . . a residential telephone subscriber who has registered his or her telephone number on the national do-not-call registry." Section 227(c)(5) sets forth the DNC violation requirements, providing for a private right of action to "[any] person who has received more than one telephone call within any 12-month period by or on behalf of the same entity."
Defendant primarily relied on a plain reading of the TCPA's statutory language in its Motion to Dismiss. In deciding the Motion, the Court agreed that "telephone solicitation" and "telephone call" are the operative terms in Section 227(c). Additionally, in normal conversation, "telephone call" means something entirely different from "text message." The Court further opined that text messaging was not an available technology in 1991, when the TCPA was implemented and, thus, DNC requirements could not have been intended to include text or SMS messages. Under a plain reading of the regulations, continued the Court, the TCPA's DNC provisions do not apply to text messages. Accordingly, because Plaintiffs relied on text messages to satisfy the DNC claim requirements, the Complaint was dismissed in its entirety.
Why is Jones Important to Your Business?
Plaintiffs attempted to address Defendant's plain reading argument by relying on FCC authority, which provides that: "the [DNC requirements] set forth in paragraph (c) and (d) of [Section 227(c)] are applicable to any person or entity making telephone solicitations or telemarketing calls or text messages." The Court noted that a certain amount of respect should be afforded to the FCC's interpretation of the TCPA's language, but the fact remains that: 1) Section 227(c)(5) of the TCPA includes "telephone call" and does not mention text or SMS messages; and 2) nowhere does the TCPA define "telephone call" to include text and/or SMS messages.
The Court's decision is the latest in a line of decisions rendered in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in McLaughlin Chiropractic Associates v. McKesson Corporation. In this pivotal opinion, the Supreme Court held that district courts are not bound by final FCC Orders.
In the rapidly-developing telemarketing litigation arena, it is critical that companies re-evaluate all viable defenses, employing both strict and liberal interpretations of the TCPA to defeat plaintiff claims. The attorneys at Klein Moynihan Turco regularly defend clients in all manner of TCPA lawsuits, exploring novel defenses to best represent clients.
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