Binding Authority?: Facebook Files Supplemental TCPA Brief to the Supreme Court Citing…Me

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Guys, I’m honored. Really.

The day following the big SCOTUS ruling crushing the hopes of TCPA defendants and Free Speech advocate alike, Facebook has filed another high-powered brief in support of its now-even-more-critical petition seeking Supreme Court review of the TCPA’s ATDS Definition.

As we reported previously, the Facebook petition is a HUGELY important–and extremely well-written and well-conceived–petition that narrows in on the circuit split  on the ATDS issue between the Ninth and Second Circuits, on the one hand, and the Eleventh and Seventh Circuits on the other. With the issue of the TCPA’s overall constitutionality now resolved–score one for the bad guys–the scope of the TCPA’s autodialer restrictions take center stage, as Facebook’s latest briefing points out.

If the petition is granted–it has been on hold for nearly a year now awaiting the outcome of AAPC–it would serve as a perfect vehicle for the Supreme Court to finally decide the fate of the TCPA’s ill-conceived ATDS definition: does it cover all automatic calls or just random ones?

And featuring rather prominently in Facebook’s Supplemental Brief– me. In a section discussing the ongoing split and the need for clarity the the Brief gives a nod to some of my work here on TCPAworld.com. What an honor!

For the curious, the brief can be found here: That Time Facebook Cited me to the Supreme Court

And you can bet your bottom dollar we’ll be keeping a close eye on Facebook’s effort to resolve this messy split of authority.

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Published by Eric J. Troutman

The Czar of TCPAWorld Eric Troutman is one of the country’s prominent class action defense lawyers and is nationally recognized in Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) litigation and compliance. He has served as lead defense counsel in more than 70 national TCPA class actions and has litigated nearly a thousand individual TCPA cases in his role as national strategic litigation counsel for major banks and finance companies. He also helps industry participants build TCPA-compliant processes, policies, and systems. Eric has built a national litigation practice based upon deep experience, rigorous analysis and extraordinary responsiveness. Eric and his team feel equally at home litigating multibillion dollar telecommunications class actions in federal court as they do developing and executing national litigation strategies for institutions facing an onslaught of individual TCPA matters. They thrive in each of these roles – delivering consistently excellent results – while never losing sight of the client experience. While many firms now tout TCPA expertise, Eric has been there from the beginning. He built one of the country’s first TCPA-only defense teams and began serving as national TCPA counsel for his clients nearly a decade ago. This perspective allows him to swiftly develop the right litigation strategies for dealing with recurring problems, without wasting time on tactics that are bound to fail. Eric’s rich historical perspective and encyclopedic knowledge of the TCPA landscape also make him an invaluable resource to institutional compliance teams struggling to comply with the shifting regulatory landscape. No task is too small – or too big. Indeed, Eric and his team have helped build TCPA-compliant systems and processes for some of the largest and most complex corporate entities in the country. He commonly works with in-house compliance counsel to build and implement enterprise and business-line specific TCPA solutions, performs TCPA audits and drafts and reviews proposed TCPA policies and procedures. He and his team also have the technical expertise necessary to assist call centers seeking to develop TCPA-resistant call path architecture or to modify existing telephony and software integration to better insulate from potential TCPA exposure. Eric has built a reputation for thought leadership. An avid blogger and speaker, he has been at the forefront of the industry’s effort to push for clarity and a return to sanity for the TCPA for years. He was selected to advocate for the financial services industry on important TCPA issues before the Federal Communications Commission and co-authored the nation’s only comprehensive practice guide on TCPA defense. In his spare time, Eric leads defense teams representing banks and other financial services companies in consumer finance litigation matters. He has experience representing clients in UCC, TILA, RESPA FCRA, CCRA, CLRA, FDCPA, RFDCPA and FCCPA claims, as well as in fraud and bank operations issues.