38 state AGs argue for broad TCPA autodialer definition

Courts Appellate Ninth Circuit Autodialer TCPA

On October 23, a coalition of 38 state attorneys general filed an amici curiae brief with the U.S. Supreme Court, urging the court to accept the broad definition of an autodialer under the TCPA, which would cover all devices with the capacity to automatically dial numbers that are stored in a list. As previously covered by InfoBytes, the Court agreed to review the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit’s decision in Duguid v. Facebook, Inc. (covered by InfoBytes here), which concluded the plaintiff plausibly alleged the social media company’s text message system fell within the definition of autodialer under the TCPA. The 9th Circuit applied the definition from their 2018 decision in Marks v. Crunch San Diego, LLC (covered by InfoBytes here), which broadened the definition of an autodialer to cover all devices with the capacity to automatically dial numbers that are stored in a list.

The attorneys general argue that the 9th Circuit’s definition of autodialer is “the only reading of the autodialer definition that is consistent with the ordinary meaning of the definition’s two key verbs: ‘store’ and ‘produce.’” Moreover, they assert the broad definition is within the original 1991 meaning of the TCPA when it was enacted by Congress as a way to address the gaps state consumer protection laws may have in preventing interstate telephone fraud and abuse. According to the attorneys general, every state statute that defined an autodialer in 1991, “understood that term to reach devices with the capacity to store and dial numbers from a predetermined list, regardless of whether a random or sequential number generator was used.” Therefore, when Congress enacted the TCPA with the intention to “supplement—not to shrink—preexisting state laws,” it would follow that Congress would not intentionally adopt a narrower definition than existed at the time among the states.