WOAH: The ACLU Just Filed an Amicus Brief Supporting Creasy and it is REALLY Good

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Real quick, we’ve been following the seesaw battle over Creasy at the district court level recently–although its really more of a buzz saw and than a seesaw right now— but there are two major appeals pending to the Courts of Appeal.

The Lindenbaum case–which is slightly ahead of the Ninth Circuit’s Perez case–is nearing briefing completion and we just received word that the power-house civil rights organization, the ACLU has, submitted a surprise brief supporting Creasy.

In the ACLU’s view the Defendant cannot be held liable under the TCPA’s discriminatory statutory scheme that punishes only disfavored speakers. (I mean welcome to the party fellas but I’ve been screaming that at the top of my lungs for like years now.)

As the ACLU puts it:

[N]o amount of notice can cure an equal treatment infirmity. And
unequal treatment is precisely what the Government’s preferred outcome would bring… Such a result could provide a curious period of enforceability for even obviously unconstitutional laws: a disfavored speaker, or a vulnerable class of person, could still be subject to liability for violating a statute that was plainly unconstitutional at the time the violation took place.

Testify friends. Testify.

(And Dear ACLU: please stick around and pay careful attention to the TCPA more broadly because its destroying the First Amendment and we could use your help. Thanks.)

Brief is here: ACLU Brief

We’ll keep an eye on this.

 

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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.

5 Comments

  1. Pingback: CREASY COMEBACK?: Three More Heavy-Hitting Briefs Prop-Up Constitutionality Battle in the Sixth Circuit – TCPAWorld
  2. Pingback: BREAKING: ACLU Representatives Join Unprecedented Podcast to Discuss HUGE Ramifications of Creasy/Lindenbaum/TCPA on First Amendment Rights – TCPAWorld

  3. Eric

    I read TCPAWorld with interest as an old time TCPA defense attorney for faxes

    There is / was a disdain for faxes that has morphed to texts / robocalls – agreed

    My question is whether you think the TCPA is unconstitutional from 2015 to 2020 or whether only the provision relating to robocalls (content based restriction) made that Section of the TCPA (robocalls) unconstitutional

    I have argued in a Motion to Dismiss (Premier SDFL) that the TCPA was unconstitutional – a statute cannot be a little bit unconstitutional

    As a fallback I also filed a Motion to Stay to let the Courts work it out as the SDFL Judges issued contradictory decisions on the same day in December 2020

    Thanks

    Bill Hayes 303 514 0658

    Reply
  4. Pingback: Creasy Alive and Well in Texas!: Court Finds TCPA “Unconstitutional from the moment Congress enacted the government debt exception until the Supreme Court handed down its decision in AAPC” – TCPAWorld
  5. Pingback: Whatever Happened to Creasy Anyway?: Here’s An Update on the Lopsided Status of the Ongoing Constitutional Challenges to the TCPA – TCPAWorld

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