• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, October 10, 2017

Facebook has been hit with a new lawsuit alleging that it violates a consumer protection law by sending users unsolicited text messages about their friends' birthdays.

"Facebook’s Birthday Texts are sent to increase revenue at the expense of violating the privacy rights of plaintiff," California resident James Meyers alleges in a class-action complaint filed last week in U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.

Meyers alleges that Facebook is violating the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, which prohibits companies from using auto-dialers to send text messages to users without their consent. He says Facebook sent him a message last year about a friend's birthday, even though he hadn't consented to receive SMS messages.

His complaint lists a variety of ways the messages may have harmed consumers. He says that message recipients "have been required to pay cell phone service providers for unwanted text messages, lost use of their cell at the time of receiving the unwanted text message, wasted time on receipt of and reading of the unwanted text messages, and have been subjected to increased electricity charges from receipt of unwanted text messages."

Meyers also alleges that Facebook obtains users' cell phone numbers "from other sources," if people don't voluntarily provide them.

Facebook is already facing a separate lawsuit over allegations that its birthday texts violate the robo-texting law. Earlier this year, U.S. District Court Judge Thelton Henderson in San Francisco rejected Facebook's arguments that it has a free speech right to send the messages.

Facebook appealed that ruling to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

The company also faces two other suits for allegedly sending illegal robotexts to people. 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. Montana resident Noah Duguid, who apparently had been assigned a recycled phone number by his carrier, alleged in a separate case that Facebook repeatedly sent him messages stating that his account had been accessed, even though he never had an account with the social networking service.

A trial judge dismissed Duguid's allegations, but allowed Holt to proceed. Duguid appealed the dismissal, while Facebook appealed the decision involving Holt. Both of those matters are now pending in front of the 9th Circuit.