FCC Dismisses Long-Pending TCPA Petitions, Leaves Key Call Blocking Fight Alive
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has dismissed 11 out of 13 long-running TCPA-related petitions as part of a broader effort to clear inactive proceedings from its docket, while leaving at least one closely watched industry challenge involving call blocking and mislabeling rules unresolved.
The FCC’s Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau announced May 12 that it was dismissing petitions and applications for review filed between 2012 and 2021 that had “gone without advocacy for several years.” The agency said the issues raised in the petitions were now considered “moot or outdated” because of changes in technology, regulations, or consumer preferences.
Among the dismissed matters was a 2012 petition from the Professional Association for Customer Engagement (PACE) seeking reconsideration of the FCC’s broad interpretation of an automatic telephone dialing system under the TCPA.
That issue later became central to years of TCPA litigation before the U.S. Supreme Court narrowed the ATDS definition in Facebook v. Duguid in 2021. The Court held that equipment must use a random or sequential number generator to qualify as an autodialer under the TCPA, significantly limiting the scope of many TCPA claims.
The FCC also dismissed a 2020 application for review filed by the National Consumer Law Center and other advocacy groups involving SMS text messaging rules.
That petition sought broader regulation of peer-to-peer and application-to-person text messaging campaigns, though much of the debate around automated texting practices shifted after the Supreme Court’s Facebook ruling.
Other dismissed petitions included filings from mortgage industry groups, telecommunications providers, and marketing organizations tied to robocall and consent regulations.
Notably, however, the FCC did not dismiss a pending petition from Responsible Enterprises Against Consumer Harassment (R.E.A.C.H.), which challenges carrier call blocking and call labeling practices that businesses argue can improperly flag legitimate outbound calls as spam.
The status of that petition remains significant for creditors, collection agencies, financial institutions, and contact centers that continue to face operational challenges tied to analytics-based call blocking and mislabeled outbound calls.
