• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, July 5, 2023

A Florida resident is asking the Supreme Court to hear an appeal of a decision dismissing his claims that Meta Platforms violated an anti-robotexting law by sending him unsolicited messages.

In a petition filed late last week, attorneys for Colin Brickman argue that lower court judges who threw out his lawsuit misinterpreted the Telephone Consumer Protection Act -- which restricts companies' ability to use autodialers make phone calls or send text messages.

“The question presented here has sweeping consequences that extend far beyond this case,” the lawyers argue.

They add that the anti-robocalling law is “one of the most frequently litigated statutes in the federal courts,” and that robocalls result in millions of complaints to the government each year. (Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote recently: “The federal government receives a staggering number of complaints about robocalls -- 3.7 million complaints in 2019 alone.”)

“This huge number of complaints and lawsuits indicates that robocalls are interfering with the lives of millions of Americans every day,” Brickman's lawyers write.

The dispute centers on the 32-year-old statute's definition of “autodialer,” and whether that term covers equipment that can make calls to marketing lists, or whether it only covers equipment that can make calls to numbers that are randomly or sequentially generated.

The battle dates to 2016, when Brickman, a Facebook user, alleged in a class-action complaint that Meta violated the Telephone Consumer Protection Act by sending him unsolicited text messages about his friends' birthdays.

Meta argued the lawsuit should be dismissed for several reasons, including that its text-sending system isn't an “autodialer” because it doesn't randomly generate the numbers that are dialed.

The statute itself defines “autodialer” as equipment that is able “to store or produce telephone numbers to be called, using a random or sequential number generator” and “to dial such numbers.”

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with Meta, ruling that its messaging system wasn't covered by the robotexting-law because the system didn't randomly or sequentially generate the numbers it texted.

Brickman's lawyers say in their petition to the Supreme Court that the 9th Circuit misinterpreted the definition of autodialer. That term, counsel argues, doesn't only cover systems that generate numbers, but also applies to systems that store numbers randomly or sequentially.

What's more, Brickman's lawyers say, robocalls and texts to numbers in a marketing lists would never be covered by the law, if it only applied to calls that were made to numbers that were randomly or sequentially generated.

Counsel also argues that numerous judges have misinterpreted the definition of autodialer in the last two years, following the Supreme Court's ruling in a separate lawsuit accusing Meta of violating the robotexting statute.

In that case, the court held that autodialers must be able “to use a random or sequential number generator to either store or produce phone numbers to be called.”

Brickman's lawyers say that prior ruling has led lower-court judges to interpret the robocalling law too narrowly.

“Many courts are holding that calls are not covered unless the phone numbers are created by the equipment,” they write. “That error is so fundamental that it has effectively repealed the Act for the bulk of calls Congress sought to ban.”