Following the United States Supreme Court's decision
in
McLaughlin v. McKesson, several courts
have ruled on the
issue of whether text messages are telephone calls for
Telephone Consumer Protection Act (“TCPA”) purposes.
Confronted with this very issue in a TCPA case in which the
defendant filed a motion to dismiss, a Georgia federal judge
recently issued a decision. We discuss the decision in detail below
and its significance for telemarketing companies.
Text Messages ≠ Telephone Calls Under the TCPA, Georgia
Federal Judge Rules
Ethan Radvansky (“Plaintiff”), on behalf of himself
and a putative class, filed a lawsuit against defendant
1-800-FLOWERS (“Defendant”) in the Northern District of
Georgia alleging TCPA
violations for the receipt of unsolicited commercial text messages.
Plaintiff, whose phone number was registered on the National Do Not
Call Registry, asserted that Defendant delivered text messages to
his phone advertising its flower business. As a
