EPIC Urges Supreme Court to Preserve Essential Robocall Protections

October 23, 2020

EPIC has filed an amicus brief in Facebook v. Duguid urging the U.S. Supreme Court to preserve the broad federal ban on robocalls to cell phones. After being sued for sending automated texts to a non-user, Facebook has argued that the federal ban on automated dialing systems—or “autodialers”—only covers a small subset of the systems currently in use. EPIC’s brief states that Facebook’s interpretation “is completely unmoored from the structure and purpose of the law.” EPIC argues that “Congress was concerned above all else with protecting the privacy of cell phone users from the scourge of robocalls” and “narrowing the autodialer definition would not protect privacy.” Instead, the brief continues, “it would put the most widely used mass dialing systems outside the scope of the” ban, and “nearly every American will be the target of an unending telemarketing campaign.” EPIC previously filed an amicus brief in Gadelhak v. AT&T Services, where the Seventh Circuit decided the same question. EPIC routinely files amicus briefs on the federal anti-robocall law, including the recently decided Supreme Court case, Barr v. American Association of Political Consultants.

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