Back to the Statute: D.C. Circuit Levels the TCPA Playing Field

In a much-anticipated decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has set aside the Federal Communications Commission's 2015 Declaratory Ruling, which broadly interpreted the Telephone Consumer Protection Act's restrictions on calls to wireless numbers.

The court held that the mere ability to reprogram a piece of equipment to perform as an "automatic telephone dialing system" ("ATDS") does not suffice to give the equipment the requisite "capacity"; that the Commission has never satisfactorily explained exactly what it thinks ATDSs must be able to do; and that the Commission's one-call safe harbor arbitrarily limited callers' ability to rely on consent they had previously received.

This Jones Day White Paper explores the probable implications of the court's decision.