A District Court judge in Georgia has granted a defendant’s motion to dismiss a Telephone Consumer Protection Act case, ruling that text messages do not meet the statute’s definition of “telephone calls.” The decision is a break from other federal courts that have ruled in the past that text messages are calls under the TCPA.
The background: The plaintiff alleged that the defendant sent multiple unsolicited marketing text messages to a phone number registered on the National Do Not Call Registry. The messages were intended for someone else and were allegedly sent without prior express consent.
- The plaintiff claimed the texts invaded his privacy and constituted unlawful telephone solicitations under the TCPA and related FCC regulations.
- The lawsuit sought statutory damages and attempted to frame the issue as a broader class action based on repeated outreach to numbers on the registry.
The ruling: Judge Thomas W. Thrash of the District Court for the Northern District of Georgia dismissed the case on the grounds that the TCPA provision at issue, Section 227(c)(5) applies only to “telephone calls” and does not extend to text messages. In plain terms, the judge concluded that Congress chose specific language and courts must respect that choice.
- The opinion noted that in ordinary usage, a telephone call and a text message are different forms of communication, and that courts cannot rewrite statutory language to keep pace with technology. Quoting another ruling, Judge Thrash wrote, “in common American English usage, a telephone call and a text message are separate and distinct forms of communication.”
- The judge also pointed to the fact that Congress has amended other parts of the TCPA to expressly reference text messages, but did not modify the specific section at issue. That distinction mattered.
- The judge reasoned that when Congress uses different terms in different parts of the same statute, those differences are presumed intentional.
