The Federal Communications Commission (“FCC”) recently announced that its new Telephone Consumer Protection Act (“TCPA”) rules concerning consent revocation become effective on April 11, 2025. These new rules make it easier for consumers to revoke their consent to receive certain calls or texts. They also impose shorter deadlines for callers to comply with consent-revocation requests and entity-specific do-not-call requests. Below we highlight the portions of these new rules that callers should know before April 11, 2025.
Revoking Prior Express Consent (“PEC”) and Prior Express Written Consent (“PEWC”)
The TCPA and the FCC’s implementing regulations prohibit making nonemergency calls to cellular telephone lines using an automatic telephone dialing system (“ATDS”) or artificial or prerecorded voice without the called party’s PEC. If such calls introduce an advertisement or constitute telemarketing, they are only permissible with the called party’s PEWC. Similarly, making nonemergency calls to residential telephone lines using an artificial or prerecorded voice without the called party’s PEC is prohibited under the TCPA. Such calls require the called party’s PEWC if they introduce an advertisement or constitute telemarketing.
Under the FCC’s new revocation rules, a called party will be able to revoke their PEC or PEWC to receive ATDS and/or prerecorded calls through any reasonable method. When a called party uses a reasonable consent revocation method, his or her consent is considered definitively revoked. The caller may no longer make ATDS or prerecorded calls to that party. Under this new rule, “[a]ny revocation request made using an automated, interactive voice or key press-activated opt-out mechanism on a call; using the words ‘stop,’ ‘quit,’ ‘end,’ ‘revoke,’ ‘opt out,’ ‘cancel,’ or ‘unsubscribe’ sent in reply to an incoming text message; or pursuant to a website or telephone number designated by the caller to process opt-out requests constitutes a reasonable means per se to revoke consent.” But if a called party’s “reply to an incoming text message uses words other than ‘stop,’ ‘quit,’ ‘end,’ ‘revoke,’ ‘opt out,’ ‘cancel,’ or ‘unsubscribe,’ the caller must treat that reply text as a valid revocation request if a reasonable person would understand those words to have conveyed a request to revoke consent.” When other words or language is used, the FCC has placed the burden on the caller to explain why those other words or language did not constitute a reasonable consent revocation. This “reasonable method” rule specifically prohibits callers from designating an exclusive means for a called party to revoke his or her consent.
Deadlines for Complying With Consent-Revocation and Do-Not-Call Requests
Under the new rules, a caller must honor a request to revoke PEC or PEWC within a reasonable time, not to exceed 10 business days from receipt of the revocation request.
The FCC’s TCPA- regulations also require telephone callers to maintain an internal do-not-call list (“internal list”). Under that rule, when a person makes a request to a specific entity not to be called, that entity must honor the request and add that person to its internal list. The current rule requires an entity to honor such requests within a reasonable time, not to exceed 30 days from the date of the request. The new rule shortens that time to 10 business days.
By April 11, 2025, callers should comply with these new rules. Based on this new “reasonable” standard, callers should typically err on the side of caution when determining whether a called party is requesting to revoke his or her PEC or PEWC. Callers should also ensure they are working quickly to honor internal DNC requests, and at least do so within 10 business days of receiving such requests. Callers should not assume that they only have to honor such requests by the 10th business day. Some courts dealing with claims based on a failure to honor a do-not-call request have held that whether such a request was honored within a reasonable time is a fact-specific question to be decided by a jury. The quicker you honor such a request, the more likely you are to avoid having a jury decide whether you did so in a reasonable time.