POLITICAL MESSAGES IN THE SPOTLIGHT: WSJ Article on Stopping Unwanted Political Texting May Prompt Even More TCPA Litigation

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You don’t see this every day.

Great big article in the Wall Street Journal discussing how to stop political messages.

This is a real hot button issue. On the one hand the lawmakers want to be able to communicate with you. So they are loathe to silence themselves by expanding the reach of the TCPA to political messages.

Then again, the TCPA already applies to political messages in some contexts–even the Constitution can’t stop the lawsuits per Justice Kavanaugh–a fact everyone seems to forget about come election season each year.

Complicating matters is the new potential rule that elected officials can be held liable for official communications–brought to you by Andrew Perrong–even as  campaign messages were always subject to the TCPA when sent using regulated technology.

And while many politicians continue to believe tat P2P texting is ok following an old FCC ruling on the subject, the Supreme Court tossed that rule in Facebook in favor of a rule looking at system capacity over “human intervention.” So the playbook being used to send most of these messages is, well… totally wrong.

The real brake on political TCPA suits is not limits of the law–or the First Amendment (ha!)–its that campaigns quickly go defunct at the end of the election season, leaving those harmed by unwanted calls with little recourse.

This has lead to the phenomenon of candidates being sued personally–just as Vivek!

GIVE IT UP: Vivek Ramaswamy Ordered to Produce Information in TCPA Class Action Over Campaign Robocalls

But such cases are not particularly strong because the individual candidate may not have personally participated in the sending of the messages.

I don’t pretend to have the answer to any of this, just reporting on what promises to be an EXTREMELY active political calling and texting season and predicting massive fallout from a TCPA perspective–especially with the WSJ calling people (even normal people) to arms over this.

For the interested be sure to catch episode 25 of Deserve to Win with the guy who made government calls potentially illegal under the TCPA–Andrew Perrong:

Will keep an eye on all of this for you!

Chat soon.

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Published by Eric "Czar" 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.

2 Comments

  1. Great big article, yea…
    https://www.wsj.com/tech/personal-tech/how-to-stop-political-text-messages-5c7247bf?page=1

    …but to us who know, it’s basically click-bait, while it mentions TCPA just once – it doesn’t explain ANYTHING about it, and how one can fight back using it – truly the only way to limit them!

    The fact you posted about it, got me all excited thinking WSJ would unveil the TCPA to the masses! What a let down 😦

    Plus responding “STOP” gets a canned (automated) response (if any) saying “you have unsubscribed, and won’t get any more texts from this number”

    Then of course you still get a sh*t-ton of them, just from other numbers…whack-a-mole…

    Although, while the comments ran the gamut, here was my fav:

    “I’ve managed to control mine. If the Dems text, I tell them I’m a betrayed black lesbian who’s voting for Trump. If it’s Republicans, I tell them I’m a fan of open borders, since that’s how I got into the country. I’m usually off the list before my response clears the cell tower.”

    Reply

  2. I know people dont like receiving them but at the end of the day this stuff needs to be protected by the First Amendment. Absolutely ludicrous that we are allowing people to filter out free speech in the name of convenience. Our whole system is built on people being able to get their message out and attract people behind their cause. Fundamentally our system crumbles if we lose this…

    Reply

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