On September 18, Plaintiff John Salcedo filed a request with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit for a rehearing en banc in Salcedo v. Hanna. My Perspectives from FSF Scholars paper titled "The FCC Should Halt Bogus Lawsuits Threatening Popular Texting Services" analyzed the Eleventh Circuit's panel decision in Salcedo. The case is a putative class action in which the alleged violation of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 (TCPA) was a single unsolicited text message by an attorney to his former client. The Eleventh Circuit panel's decision in Salcedo acknowledged that just a single allegedly text message constitutes an alleged violation under the FCC's current interpretation of the TCPA provision prohibiting "autodialers." Although the Eleventh Circuit held against the Plaintiff for other good reasons, this latest filing indicates the lawsuit isn't going away – at least not yet.
Salcedo is a case in point for why the FCC needs to modify its TCPA rules to target the real problem robocallers that Congress had in mind rather than leave the door open to lawsuits that appear frivolous. For more, read the Perspectives paper.
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