The Fourth Circuit reversed

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The panel first agreed with the District Court’s conclusion that the exemption was content-based, finding that “the relationship between the federal government and the debtor is only relevant to the subject matter of the call. In other words, the debt collection exemption applies to a phone call made to the debtor because the call is about the debt, not because of any relationship between the federal government and the debtor.” But the Fourth Circuit disagreed with the District Court on whether the exemption survived strict scrutiny for two reasons: First, the Fourth Circuit found that the exemption authorized “the intrusive calls that the [TCPA] was enacted to prohibit,” thereby subverting any privacy protections. Second, the exemption deviated “from the purpose of the automated call ban,” meaning that it was “an outlier among the other statutory exemptions.”

The Court, however, stopped short of invalidating the TCPA entirely. To do so, it held that the TCPA could still constitute a meaningful statute in the absence of the debt collection exemption. The Court reasoned bc data brazil that the TCPA operated successfully for 24 years without the exemption, which suggested that severing the exemption was a better outcome than a wholesale invalidation of the statute.

For consumer-facing companies, the decision may be an indication of the Fourth Circuit’s stance (or at least a panel of the Fourth Circuit’s stance) on the TCPA’s protections. Though the Court found that the debt-collection exemption was unconstitutional, the decision includes substantial dicta regarding the importance of the privacy concerns the TCPA seeks to protect, referring to debt collection calls as “intrusive” and “some of the most disruptive phone calls [American consumers] receive.” Historically, the Fourth Circuit has not seen the same volume of TCPA litigation as other circuits, but the language used in this opinion may invite further lawsuits.

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David N. Anthony
David Anthony handles litigation against consumer financial services businesses and other highly regulated companies across the United States. He is a strategic thinker who balances his extensive litigation experience with practical business advice to solve companies’ hardest problems.

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Virginia Bell Flynn
Virginia is a partner in the firm’s Consumer Financial Services practice and specifically within the Financial Services Litigation practice. She represents clients in federal and state court, both at the trial and appellate level in the areas of complex litigation and business disputes…

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Chad R. Fuller
Chad is a partner in the firm’s Consumer Financial Services practice with a primary focus in financial services litigation. He is an accomplished trial attorney who has served as lead counsel in state and federal courts across the country in which he represents…

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