Supreme Court sides with Facebook over unwanted text messages

The Supreme Court unanimously joined Facebook on Thursday, ruling that its telephone notification system did not violate a law banning “automatic telephone numbering systems”.

The court noted that the 1991 Consumer Telephone Protection Act (TCPA) restriction only affects systems that use random or sequential number generators, which Facebook does not.

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“Because Facebook’s notification system does not store or generate numbers” using a random or sequential number generator, “it is not an automatic dialer,” Judge Sonia Sotomayor wrote in the court opinion.

FOX Business reached out to Facebook for comment, but they did not immediately respond.

Noah Duguid took the case after receiving a number of text messages from Facebook informing him that someone was trying to log into his account from an unknown browser. Duguid, who claimed not to have a Facebook account and never gave the company his phone number, sued after failing to get shutdown notifications. Duguid alleged that the practice, which resulted in him receiving unwanted text messages, violated the TCPA.

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The law in question prohibits the use of equipment which can “store or generate telephone numbers to call, using a random or sequential number generator; and … dial such numbers ”.

The main argument was based on syntax, particularly whether the phrase “use a random or sequential number generator” applied to both “store” and “produce”. According to Duguid, the phrase only described the ability to generate phone numbers, which meant that any system that could store numbers – without the use of a generator – and dial them was breaking the law.

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The Supreme Court sided with Facebook, ruling that the TCPA only banned systems that use random or sequential number generators, whether they store them or produce them. Although Facebook’s system stores and dials numbers, they are numbers assigned to them, not numbers that they generate themselves.

In summary, the Congress definition of an automatic dialer requires that in all cases, whether storing or generating numbers to be called, the equipment in question must use a random or sequential number generator. “Sotomayor wrote. “This definition excludes equipment like Facebook’s login notification system, which does not use such technology.”

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The court, overturning the decision of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, noted that according to Duguid’s definition, the law would cover “virtually all modern cell phones, which have the capacity to” store … telephone numbers. to call ”and“ dial these digits. ‘”