Yesterday TCPAWorld.com gave you live coverage of the big Supreme Court oral argument as SCOTUS reviewed the constitutionality of the TCPA under the First Amendment in Barr v. AAPC.
Our live feeds can be found here and here.
And our definitive analysis–already one of our most popular articles ever–can be found here.
But our coverage continues today with a team podcast round table where the Archduke, the Grand Duchess, and Ben Beaton—a former supreme court clerk and co-chair of Squire Patton Bogg’s powerful appellate team–breakdown every little nuance of the argument and help YOU understand what happened, why it happened, and what it all means for the TCPA and the First Amendment.
CLICK ANY OF THE PICTURES BELOW TO VIEW THE PODCAST
I play host and give you my take right out of the gate–the Supreme Court is struggling with a major and difficult decision: strike down a popular statute, or run roughshod over decades of cherished constitutional principles. Tough choice folks.
The Archduke provides his brilliant analysis–unwinding the most nuanced aspects of the oral argument and the tough issues posed by the severance remedy in this case.
Of course, Ben Beaton–who clerked for Justice Ginsburg–provides his brilliant take on the argument, explaining exactly what the case might mean for the First Amendment more generally, and also telling us what we can and CAN’T safely expect SCOTUS to do with this one.
And finally, the Grand Duchess–her Royal Highness Herself–joins us to breakdown the broader privacy aspects presented by the SCOTUS appeal and give her prediction on the outcome of the case on the TCPA.
We hit this thing from all angles folks and give you exactly what YOU need to know about the BIGGEST TCPA event of the year.
Thanks to all for your positive comments and feedback. It has been a long 36 hours and a true labor of love. As always if you’d like to chat feel free to reach out.
Thanks so much for your coverage of this case. Insightful and entertaining as always. I especially enjoyed Mr. Beaton’s breakdown of Justice Breyer’s questioning.
I thought the government left a good argument for severability on the table, despite a few questions from the justices that could have drawn it out. What speech does the 2015 government debt exemption allow, that wouldn’t be covered by other exemptions to the TCPA? Very little. The federal government and its contractors already have sovereign immunity and derivative sovereign immunity (per Campbell-Ewald v. Gomez), so the 2015 exemption comes into play only when a collector makes calls beyond the scope of its authority. Also, calls made to debtors with consent or as part of a contractual relationship are generally legal. By and large, what we are left with is skip-tracing robocalls to people who aren’t even parties to the debt – purportedly made to collect money for the gov’t, but without gov’t authorization. This is not exactly the Federalist Papers we are talking about; it is closer to harassment or maybe even fraud. The Court could strike down the exemption for these robocalls without doing any harm to the First Amendment.
I understand why the S.G. couldn’t use that line of attack, since he was also charged with defending the indefensible 2015 exemption. (Has anyone ever owned up to writing that?) But I think the AAPC also missed an opportunity to make a larger point with this case about how the TCPA can favor government speech via sovereign immunity. Imagine a congressman claiming he has the right to make autodialed “town hall” calls as part of his official duties, while his challenger can’t do the same. Instead, the AAPC attacked the TCPA as not protecting a sufficiently compelling privacy interest. Justice Kavanaugh sounded like he couldn’t believe they would even try that argument. Not a good way to end.