Overview
We previously covered the recent cottage industry of Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) opt-out evader litigations. These are cases where individuals purposefully reply to text messages with wordy and sometimes unclear responses purportedly requesting to opt-out from marketing text messages or telemarketing calls. In reality, such responses are intended to fool or confuse the back-end algorithms that accept and process such do-not-text requests. We also have written about the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) then-draft Report and Order and Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking from early September 2026, which would inject some level of common sense and order into an area of the law that is being purposefully abused by plaintiffs.
Last week, the FCC published its new and final consent-revocation rules in the Federal Register. The rules go into effect on November 25, 2026 and should provide industry with a good layer of protection from baseless opt-out evader claims that have been running rampant. Specifically, in relevant part, the new consent-revocation rules will:
- Allow telemarketers to designate an exclusive method by which a consumer who has previously provided his or her prior express written consent or otherwise invited or permitted telemarketing calls or marketing text messages (including through an established business relationship) to opt-out from receiving such calls or text messages in the future. No longer must telemarketers honor revocation requests made by consumers "using any reasonable method" as provided for in 47 C.F.R. ยง 64.1200(a)(10). As a result, telemarketers may use, among other things, specific standardized keywords in response to an incoming text (such as "STOP," "END," "CANCEL," "UNSUBSCRIBE," "QUIT," "REVOKE," or "OPT OUT"), or require consumers to visit a specific website or call a specific telephone number to make a do-not-call/revocation request. It bears noting that telemarketers must disclose the means by which consumers may opt-out and, with respect to text messaging, while a telemarketer need only identify one term to be used for revoking consent, it must honor any of the aforementioned standardized keywords as opt-out requests.
- Allow callers and senders of text messages to interpret a revocation request as applying only to the specific category of informational call or text message as opposed to all autodialed and/or prerecorded message calls or text messages. In other words, an opt-out from calls about bill reminders would not constitute an opt-out for fraud alerts. But the FCC has "emphasize[d] that this specific modification [to the TCPA consent-revocation rules] affects only informational calls. . . . Revocation requests made in response to robocalls that contain an advertisement or constitute telemarketing revoke consent to all future robocalls containing an advertisement or that constitute telemarketing from that caller." For telemarketing calls and marketing text messages, a consumer need only make a single revocation request in order to opt-out of future telemarketing communications from or on behalf of that entity.
The FCC's new rule should help ebb the flow of opt-out evader complaints and demand letters that have plagued industry while, at the same time, providing clear instruction to consumers who truly do not wish to receive such calls or text messages on how to make such requests.
