Overview
On September 9, 2026, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) issued a draft Report and Order and Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (FNPRM), proposing significant caller-friendly changes to the rules surrounding a consumer's ability to revoke consent previously given to receive telephone calls and text messages under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA). If the Report and Order is adopted substantially as drafted, callers would be permitted to limit certain informational-call or text message opt-outs to the specific category of communication at issue, and designate the methods that consumers must use to revoke consent. The proposed rulemaking also would broaden the fraud-alert exemption for financial institutions. Additionally, the FCC seeks comment on other related issues. The item is scheduled for the FCC's September 30, 2026 open meeting and remains subject to change.
What the Draft Order Would Do
- Category-specific revocation for informational calls. Callers could treat a revocation made in response to one category of informational calls or texts as applying only to that category. Advertising and telemarketing calls are unaffected: a revocation there still revokes consent to all future advertising/telemarketing telecommunications from that caller.
- Exclusive revocation method. Callers could designate an exclusive set of methods—e.g., an IVR/key-press opt-out, a standardized reply-text message keyword, or a caller-designated website or phone number—and would not have to honor revocations made by other means, so long as the methods are clearly and conspicuously disclosed on the call or in the text. Callers that do not designate an exclusive method remain subject to the existing "any reasonable means" standard. Existing FCC-prescribed opt-out mechanisms for exempt and advertising/telemarketing calls would remain unchanged.
- Broader financial-institution fraud-alert exemption. The exemption for fraud, data-breach, and wire-transfer calls to wireless numbers would extend beyond numbers the customer directly provided to numbers obtained from a "reliable source." The rule defines a "reliable source" to include a number supplied by a spouse or other family member authorized on the account, obtained when the customer calls the institution, or contained within records obtained from another financial institution. The other conditions on this exemption would remain in place.
Effective date: The draft proposal would take effect 30 days after publication in the Federal Register. Notably, this would supersede the FCC's prior waiver that had pushed the "revoke-all" rule's effective date to January 31, 2027, meaning that the modified (category-specific) rule could replace the "revoke-all" rule before it ever takes effect.
Litigation Implications: The Opt-Out Evader Problem
The exclusive-method provision could undercut consent-revocation claims based on deliberately nonconforming opt-out requests: so-called "opt-out evaders" who reply to "Text STOP to stop" and similar instructions with deliberately non-conforming language, then sue when the non-conforming message goes unrecognized. Where a caller properly designates and discloses an exclusive method of opting out, it generally would not have to honor a purported revocation that does not use that method, including, for example, a nonstandard text response where standardized reply keywords are the designated method.
As we recently discussed, courts are showing less patience with these suits on their own. In fact, in Juarez v. BJ Acquisition LLC, No. 2:26-cv-02944-MCS-AS, Order Re: Motion to Dismiss (ECF 15), at 2 (C.D. Cal. May 20, 2026), a recent opt-out evader case, the court invited the defendant to consider either early summary judgment or a Rule 11 sanctions motion based on the plaintiff's apparent decision to omit his actual opt-out message in order "to evade a Rule 12 dismissal."
What the FNPRM Would Seek Comment On
- Shortening the current 10-business-day window to honor revocation requests, possibly to seven business days.
- Eliminating one-way text messaging protocols and mandating two-way (reply-to-revoke) texting, at least for some categories of messages.
- Whether to require callers to offer a one-step "revoke all" method, even though the Report and Order allows category-specific revocation, and whether a revocation should apply only to the particular telephone number at issue.
- New rules on how revocation applies across affiliates, lines of business, or divisions.
- Miscellaneous: narrowing the list of standardized reply-text keywords, dropping the rebuttable-presumption framework, and allowing a confirmation call following a revocation request within a specified period.
What Companies Should Do Now
- Inventory current opt-out/revocation methods across voice, IVR, and text messaging channels, and identify a candidate-exclusive method for each.
- Draft (or revise) the "clear and conspicuous" disclosure language needed to designate that method and confirm that it appears on every relevant call and text.
- Segment informational-call categories now, so category-specific revocation can be implemented cleanly once the rule takes effect.
