As its name suggests, the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 (“TCPA”) was drafted, debated, passed, and signed into law well before cell phones became ubiquitous. It is, therefore, unsurprising that the statutory language of the TCPA does not expressly state whether the law applies to text messages. This was a subject of great interest in recent oral arguments before the United States Supreme Court (“SCOTUS”) in Facebook v. Duguid (“Facebook”). In Facebook, several of SCOTUS’s textualist Justices wondered aloud whether the TCPA could or should apply to text messages, when the statute does not even mention them.
What was the Crux of the Justices’ Questions?
[Read More]