InfoBytes Blog
District Court allows CFPB, Massachusetts AG’s telemarketing suit to proceed
On August 10, the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts denied a motion to dismiss filed by a credit repair organization and the company’s president and owner (collectively, “defendants”) in a joint action taken by the CFPB and the Massachusetts attorney general, which alleged the defendants committed deceptive acts and practices in violation of the Consumer Financial Protection Act (CFPA), the Massachusetts Consumer Protection Law, and the FTC’s Telemarketing Sales Rule (TSR). As previously covered by InfoBytes, the complaint alleges the defendants, among other things, claimed their credit-repair services could help consumers substantially improve their credit scores and promised to fix “unlimited” amounts of negative items from consumers’ credit reports, but, in “numerous instances,” the defendants failed to achieve these results. The defendants also allegedly violated the TSR by engaging in abusive acts and by requesting and collecting fees before achieving any results related to repairing a consumer’s credit. The defendants moved to dismiss, arguing that they were governed by the Credit Repair Organizations Act (CROA), which cannot be reconciled with the TSR, the TSR definition of “telemarketing” is vague and violates the Due Process Clause, and that applying the TSR’s definition of telemarketing would place an unfair content-based restriction on speech that restricts when they can collect payments for their services. Moreover, the defendants claimed, among other things, that the FTC “exceeded its authority in promulgating rules targeting their conduct because Congress intended that only unsolicited telemarketing calls would be addressed by the FTC’s regulations.”
The court disagreed, holding first that that the CROA and the TSR do not conflict. “[C]ompliance with the TSR’s payment requirement would not cause defendants to violate the CROA,” the court stated. “The TSR simply adds a precondition to requesting payment…” Additionally, the court noted that the TSR’s “restriction is on conduct—the timing of the payment—not on speech,” adding that while “Congress directed the FTC to create rules regarding specific telemarketing activities. . ., Congress also authorized the FTC to create additional rules addressing ‘deceptive telemarketing acts or practices’ at its discretion.” As such, the court held that defendants did not show that “Congress intended the FTC to exclusively address unsolicited telemarketing calls.” Furthermore, the court held that the plaintiffs adequately defined the defendants’ allegedly deceptive conduct and that the alleged violations of state law are plausible.