On April 1, 2021 the Supreme Court decided Facebook Inc. v. Duguid. The issue was whether the definition of an "automatic telephone dialing system" in the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 encompasses any device that can “store” and “automatically dial” telephone numbers, even if the device does not “us[e] a random or sequential number generator.”
In a 9-0 opinion authored by Justice Sotamayor, the Court reversed the ruling of the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and remanded the case. The Supreme Court held, “To qualify as an ‘automatic telephone dialing system’ under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991, a device must have the capacity either to store, or to produce, a telephone number using a random or sequential number generator.” This decision narrows the federal robocoll ban.
Scott D. Delacourt, Partner at Wiley Rein LLP and Daniel Lyons, Professor of Law at Boston College School of Law, joins us today for a conversation moderated by Danielle Thumann, Attorney Advisor for FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr.