Hi TCPAWorld! A putative class action lawsuit has been filed against Victoria’s Secret, alleging violations of the TCPA. The case, Chautin v. Victoria Secret Stores, LLC, Case No. 6:25-cv-01269, was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana and centers on marketing text messages sent to a number on the National DNC Registry.
The complaint alleges the following:
- Plaintiff Samantha Chautin registered her cellular telephone number on the National DNC Registry on June 19, 2025.
- Throughout July and August 2025, well after the 31-day grace period for DNC compliance, she received at least twelve marketing text messages from Victoria’s Secret.
- The plaintiff alleges she never provided her phone number to Victoria’s Secret or gave any form of consent to be contacted.
- The messages were allegedly intended for another consumer, making this a “wrong number” scenario.
- The legal claim is based exclusively on the TCPA’s DNC provisions, specifically 47 U.S.C. §227(c)(5), which creates a private right of action for receiving more than one “telephone call” within a 12-month period that violates DNC regulations.
The lawsuit seeks to represent a nationwide class defined as:
All persons throughout the United States (1) who did not provide their telephone number to Defendant (2) to whom Defendant delivered, or caused to be delivered, more than one voice message or text message within a 12-month period, promoting Defendant’s goods or services, (3) where the person’s residential or cellular telephone number had been registered with the National Do Not Call Registry for at least thirty days before Defendant delivered, or caused to be delivered, at least two of the voice messages or text messages within the 12-month period, (4) within four years preceding the date of this complaint and through the date of class certification.
Under the TCPA, statutory damages are $500 for each violation. If the violations are found to be “willful or knowing,” the damages can be trebled to $1,500 per text message. Given the potential size of the class, the financial exposure for Victoria’s Secret could be in the tens or hundreds of millions of dollars.
The central legal battle in this case may end up being another direct result of the Supreme Court’s June 2025 decision in McLaughlin.
Before McLaughlin, federal courts were bound by the FCC interpretation that the word “calls” in the TCPA also includes text messages. The McLaughlin decision eliminated this requirement, freeing each of the 94 federal district courts to interpret the statute for itself.
This created an immediate and deep judicial split on whether the TCPA’s DNC rules apply to text messages at all. Victoria’s Secret has a powerful, potentially case-dispositive argument it can now raise in a motion to dismiss.
So the outcome of Chautin v. Victoria’s Secret will likely depend entirely on which of these two conflicting legal interpretations the Western District of Louisiana chooses to adopt.
Now, we wait to see if Victoria’s Secret’s counsel will make the argument and if so how the 5th Circuit case law develops here…stay tuned.
Find the full case here: CLICK HERE.