The Telephone Consumer Protection Act gives you powerful rights against telemarketers and robocallers, including the right to sue.
The Telephone Consumer Protection Act (1991) regulates telemarketing calls, auto-dialed calls, prerecorded calls, unsolicited faxes, and text messages. It applies to calls made to cell phones, landlines, and wireless numbers. The TCPA is the primary federal law protecting consumers from unwanted phone communications.
Key provisions: businesses must obtain prior express written consent before making autodialed or prerecorded calls to cell phones, and they must honor Do Not Call requests within 30 days.
Under the TCPA, you have the right to: not receive autodialed or prerecorded calls without your consent, request to be placed on a company's internal Do Not Call list, sue companies that violate the TCPA for $500 per violation (or $1,500 for willful violations), and revoke your consent at any time.
Each unauthorized call or text is a separate violation. If a company sends you 10 unauthorized texts, that's potentially $5,000-$15,000 in damages. This has made TCPA litigation one of the most active areas of consumer protection law.
File TCPA complaints with: the FCC at consumercomplaints.fcc.gov, the FTC at reportfraud.ftc.gov (for Do Not Call violations), and your state attorney general. Document every unwanted call with the date, time, number, and what was said.
For individual lawsuits, you can file in small claims court (no lawyer needed) or consult a TCPA attorney. Many TCPA lawyers work on contingency, meaning you pay nothing unless you win. Settlements typically range from $500-$1,500 per violation.
TCPA class action settlements have totaled billions of dollars. Major recent settlements: Capital One ($75 million, 2023), DirecTV ($23.6 million, 2024), and numerous debt collector settlements. Individual plaintiffs can receive $500-$1,500 per call.
To build a strong TCPA case: document that you never gave consent (or clearly revoked it), keep records of all unwanted calls/texts, note whether the calls used autodialing or prerecorded messages, and consult with a TCPA attorney for cases involving multiple violations.
TCPA (1991): regulates phone calls and text messages, provides private right of action ($500-$1,500 per violation). CAN-SPAM (2003): regulates commercial email, no private right of action. TRACED Act (2019): expanded FCC enforcement powers specifically against illegal robocalls.
The TCPA is the most consumer-friendly of these laws because it allows individuals to sue. The TRACED Act strengthened government enforcement but didn't create new private rights of action.
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