FCC Releases Long-Awaited TCPA Ruling

On July 10, 2015, the Federal Communications Commission ("FCC") released its much-anticipated Telephone Consumer Protection Act ("TCPA") declaratory ruling, expanding on the positions announced at its June 18 Open Meeting on important TCPA issues.  The ruling resolves 21 requests for clarification, and, in particular, confirms that an "automatic telephone dialing system" (i.e., an autodialer) includes devices that do not "currently" or "presently" have the capacity to dial random or sequential phone numbers without human involvement.  This will be a controversial ruling.  In fact, ACA International immediately filed a lawsuit in the U.S. Court of Appeals of the D.C. Circuit following the release of the ruling, alleging that the ruling expands the scope of the TCPA further than Congress intended.  Over the next week, we will be exploring the ruling in more detail, but today we analyze arguably the most controversial issue:  the definition of autodialer.