Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) and Mini-TCPAs

Looking Ahead to 2026

The Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) landscape in 2025 saw federal rollback, judicial overhaul, and further increases in state-level legislation. In McLaughlin Chiropractic Associates, Inc. v. McKesson Corp. et al, the U.S. Supreme Court found that the Administrative Orders Review Act (aka the Hobbs Act) does not bind lower courts to the Federal Communications Commission’s interpretation of the TCPA. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit also made headlines when it invalidated the agency’s “one-to-one consent” rule, although the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) contemporaneously paused the rule’s enactment. Overall, Congress and the FCC signaled little appetite for expanding TCPA protections beyond current boundaries. Meanwhile, state legislatures broadened “mini-TCPA” laws to capture text messaging and digital solicitations, complicating compliance expectations for nationwide campaigns. 

Together, these developments appear to mark a pivot from more than a decade of aggressive federal interpretation that leaned in favor of consumers. Meanwhile, states have aggressively passed their own mini-TCPA laws, seeking to mirror and, in some instances, enhance consumer protection against unwanted calls and text messages.

In 2026, Goodwin expects that even more states will introduce or pass legislation applying TCPA-style protections and that, as a result, state-level enforcement actions and private lawsuits will increase after a lull in litigation activity following the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2021 decision in Facebook, Inc. v. Duguid. We also expect further divergence among courts regarding novel challenges to TCPA in a post-Chevron deference environment.

Key Trends From 2025

FCC Seeks to Limit Scope of Its Regulations Under the TCPA

President Trump’s appointment of Brendan Carr as FCC chair in January 2025 signaled that the second Trump administration was taking a softer approach to TCPA regulation and enforcement as Carr, in his tenure as an FCC commissioner, has repeatedly advocated for broader deregulation. Consistent with this, the FCC’s TCPA focus in 2025 centered on narrowing rules viewed as exceeding statutory authority and recognizing business disruption and expense to previously proposed TCPA rules, like the one-to-one consent rule.

Key developments in 2025 included:

• Quiet-Hours Clarification: In March, the FCC issued a public notice seeking comment on whether the TCPA’s 8 am–9 pm “quiet hours” restriction applies to text messages sent with “prior express written consent” from the consumer. The public notice also sought comment on whether the quiet hours restriction applies to solicitations to cellular phones. The notice received several comments, ranging from industry stakeholders in support of the petition to consumer protection advocates opposing it. As of year-end, the FCC had yet to issue a formal decision.
• Consent Revocation Rule: The FCC granted a second one-year waiver — until April 2026 — for companies to comply with the portion of 47 Code of Federal Regulations section 64.1200(a)(10) that requires revocation across unrelated communication channels, citing the technical challenges financial institutions and healthcare providers face in implementing reengineered, compliant systems.
• Demand-Response Ruling: In June, the FCC clarified that if a consumer provides a utility with their phone number, then that qualifies as prior express consent such that utilities may send time-sensitive “demand-response” alerts without renewed consent, broadening the concept of “closely related” informational communications.

Volume of TCPA Litigation Remained Steady and Focused on Statutory Interpretation

The number of TCPA-related lawsuits in 2025 was consistent with 2024. Between January 1, 2025, through November 30, 2025, 2,588 TCPA lawsuits were filed, reflecting a negligible 0.4% decrease from 2024.¹  Looking ahead to 2026, increased state legislation (including new and proposed laws covered in the following subsection) may result in an uptick in state mini-TCPA litigation.

States Expand Patchwork of Compliance Requirements

Throughout 2025, several states passed or introduced legislation that would expand telemarketing and texting restrictions, creating overlapping and sometimes inconsistent regimes:

• Texas Senate Bill 140: Effective September 1, 2025, the law broadened “telephone solicitation” to include texts and images, introduced a private right of action with statutory damages up to $5,000 per violation, and introduced new language that explicitly protects a claimant’s right to seek full recovery for each separate violation, regardless of their litigation history under the amended statute.
• Oregon House Bill (HB) 3865: In effect as of January 1, 2026, the law restricts contact hours to 8 am–8 pm, limits daily calls to three per consumer, and expressly expands the restrictions to cover text messages as well.
• North Carolina HB 936: Referred to the Committee on Rules and Operations of the Senate in May 2025, the proposed legislation would replace “express invitation or permission” with “prior express written consent” and redefine “robocalls” broadly; however, the rule is still pending Senate action.
• South Carolina HB 3323: The “Telephone Solicitation Act,” referred to the House Labor, Commerce and Industry Committee on January 14, 2025, would require a consumer’s express written consent for commercial sales calls made with an “automated system for the selection or dialing of telephone numbers [or] the playing of a recorded message,” a notably broader definition than technology covered by the TCPA.
• Washington HB 1103: Referred to the House Consumer Protection & Business Committee after a hearing on January 15, 2025, the proposed legislation would prohibit any person or organization from initiating telephone solicitation, including via text messages, to a Washington resident who is on the National Do Not Call Registry without consent.

Collectively, these measures aim to expand exposure for companies operating across multiple jurisdictions and signal that some states intend to fill the gaps left by federal retrenchment.

State attorneys general were also active in the telemarketing space. In August 2025, the multistate Anti-Robocall Litigation Task Force, comprised of 51 state attorneys general, issued new warning letters to carriers and lead-generation firms for failing to filter spoofed traffic. In December, they announced a new phase of an effort they have titled “Operation Robocall Roundup,” investigating and sending letters to four voice service providers and ordering them “to stop transmitting suspected illegal robocalls across their networks.”

In the News

Supreme Court — McLaughlin Chiropractic Associates, Inc. v. McKesson Corp. et al

In June 2025, the Supreme Court curtailed agency deference by holding that “the Hobbs Act does not bind federal district courts” to the FCC’s interpretations of the TCPA. Consistent with its prior ruling in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, the Court held that district courts must independently interpret the statute “under ordinary principles of statutory interpretation,” giving only “appropriate respect” to agency reasoning. The McLaughlin ruling and the Court’s departure from agency deference has led parties and courts involved in TCPA litigation to focus on the plain meaning and original intent of the legislative text and reduced the reliability of FCC’s rules and interpretative guidance in private litigation.

Eleventh Circuit — Insurance Marketing Coalition Ltd. v. FCC

In January 2025, the Eleventh Circuit vacated the FCC’s 2023 rule that introduced both one-to-one consent and “logically and topically associated” requirements for calls with consent, finding the rule impermissibly altered the meaning of “prior express consent” in the statute. The FCC, now led by Carr, did not appeal and, by August 2025, formally reinstated the prior consent definition.

District Courts — Texts Versus Calls

After McLaughlin, two 2025 district courts (the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida in Jones v. Blackstone Medical Services, LLC, and the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida in Davis v. CVS Pharmacy, Inc.) held that text messages are not “telephone calls” under 47 U.S. Code section 227(c)(5), rejecting deference to FCC orders that equated texts with calls. Both courts emphasized that “telephone call” in the statute should bear its ordinary meaning as of the time the statute was enacted — excluding technologies not then in existence such as text messages — and explicitly declined to defer to the preexisting FCC interpretation. Jones is pending on appeal in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, setting up more appellate guidance on the scope of the definition of “telephone calls” in 2026.

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1. ^[1] “WebRecon Nov 2025 Stats,” WebRecon (last accessed January 28, 2026). ↩

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Read the next chapter, “Data Privacy and Cybersecurity.”

This informational piece, which may be considered advertising under the ethical rules of certain jurisdictions, is provided on the understanding that it does not constitute the rendering of legal advice or other professional advice by Goodwin or its lawyers. Prior results do not guarantee similar outcomes.