Text & Call Consent Revocation Rules Not Revoked – What You Need to Know Before April 2025 to Stay in TCPA Compliance

While you may have seen in the press that a new FCC rule around consent was delayed and invalidated in the 11th circuit, as of now, the FCC’s revocation of consent rule is still set to take effect (see: Strengthening the Ability of Consumers to Stop Robocalls). This rule significantly expands requirements for how consumers can revoke consent to receive calls and texts from a business. Compliance will require technological and backend changes for many businesses, who will want to take steps now to prepare for this rule coming into effect.

Here are some key highlights:

  • The rule applies to communications governed by the TCPA, meaning autodialed or prerecorded or artificial voice calls and autodialed text messages.

  • This rule seems to broadly require that consumers have the right to send a single opt out request that revokes consent to receive all communications from a particular business.

  • This single opt out must be honored across multiple programs (e.g. transactional and marketing) and mediums (call and text).

  • Opt outs must be honored within ten (10) business days.

  • Consumers may opt out by any reasonable means.  This includes (but isn’t limited to) opting out through an automated, interactive voice or key press-activated opt out mechanism on a robocall, by responding “STOP”, “quit”, “end”, “revoke”, “opt out”, “cancel”, or “unsubscribe” or a similar word in reply to a text, or by contacting the company via their email or phone number provided on the company website. Designating an exclusive means to revoke consent is not allowed.

  • Companies can send one confirmation text within 5 minutes of the opt out request to confirm the request to revoke consent (without any marketing/promotional content) and, if relevant, to clarify whether the consumer wants to opt out of all or only certain types of communications.

  • Additionally, the commentary indicates that an opt out request in response to a call or text will remove the specific consent that overrides a number being on the National Do Not Call registry, and thus, callers/senders will need to scrub those numbers against the relevant federal (and likely state) Do Not Call lists.

Some Practical Takeaways

This new rule will require due diligence to make sure that:

(1) opt outs received by any reasonable means are being recognized and honored by the business;

(2) opt-outs are honored across all communication programs (transactional and marketing) and mediums (call and text); and

(3) all opt-outs for the sender are processed within the required 10 day timeframe.

Some additional considerations: The new rule may impact the approach for obtaining consent when collecting a phone number and how messages sent by separate divisions of a company/caller/sender are handled.  Businesses will want to make sure that they have the technological means to accomplish these broad cross-corporate requirements, which may involve separate databases and business teams.  And, personnel responsible for monitoring customer service calls and email inboxes must be trained on what to do when a consumer says they no longer want to receive calls or texts.

The nuances of how to comply with this new rule can be quite tricky and the attorneys at InfoLawGroup are happy to advise further. 

Originally published by InfoLawGroup LLP. If you would like to receive regular emails from us, in which we share updates and our take on current legal news, please subscribe to InfoLawGroup’s Insights HERE.

Justine Young Gottshall, Tatyana Ruderman & Brian SchallerFCC, TCPA compliance