• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, July 31, 2017

A federal judge has rejected Montana resident Noah Duguid's request to revive his lawsuit accusing Facebook of an anti-spam law by repeatedly sending him text messages.

The ruling, issued last week by U.S. District Court Judge Jon Tigar in San Francisco, leaves in place a previous order dismissing the lawsuit.

The battle between Duguid and Facebook dates to March of 2015, when Duguid alleged in a class-action complaint that Facebook repeatedly sent him text messages, although he never used the social networking service. Duguid, who apparently had been assigned a recycled phone number, alleged that Facebook repeatedly notified him via SMS that his account had been accessed.

Duguid contended that the company violated the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, which prohibits companies from using automated dialers to send text messages to people without their consent.

But Tigar ruled in February that Duguid's complaint lacked enough information to support his conclusion that Facebook sent the messages with a robo-dialer.

The following month, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated a separate lawsuit that also alleged violations of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act. The appellate court said at the time that equipment "does not need to dial numbers or send text messages 'randomly'" to be considered an autodialing system.

Duguid then asked Tigar to reconsider his earlier ruling. Tigar rejected that request, ruling that the facts of the two cases were "similar," but "not identical."

Duguid is appealing the ruling to the 9th Circuit.

Facebook currently faces at least two other lawsuits alleging violations of the robo-texting law. District of Columbia resident Christine Holt, who says she doesn't have a Facebook account, is suing the company for allegedly sending her unwanted SMS messages after she obtained a cell phone from MetroPCS. Also, Florida resident Colin Brickman, alleged that the company is violating the anti-spam law by sending users messages about their friends' birthdays.

Trial judges in both of those matters rejected Facebook's arguments to dismiss the lawsuits at an early stage. Facebook has asked the 9th Circuit to hear an appeal of those rulings.