TCPA and Unwanted Calls: Consent, Robocalls and Consumer Rights

What the TCPA regulates

The Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991, 47 U.S.C. § 227, is a federal communications law, not a general ban on every unwanted call. It restricts specified uses of automatic telephone dialing systems and artificial or prerecorded voices (§ 227(b)), unsolicited fax advertisements, and — through the FCC's implementing rules at 47 CFR § 64.1200 — telemarketing calls and texts generally, including the National Do Not Call Registry. Different consent standards and exemptions apply depending on the technology, the destination (cell vs. landline) and the purpose (marketing vs. informational). The FCC's telemarketing and robocalls page and its consumer guide are the best starting points.

A call being annoying does not by itself prove a TCPA violation. Emergency communications, calls made with valid consent, many informational calls, and calls that do not use regulated technology are treated differently, and political and charitable calls have their own carve-outs. State laws can add separate requirements — Florida's Telephone Solicitation Act and a growing number of state "mini-TCPAs" are stricter than the federal statute in places. This guide is general information, not legal advice.

The core rules, with citations

• Prerecorded or artificial-voice telemarketing to any phone, and autodialed or prerecorded calls and texts to cell phones, require the called party's prior express consent — and for marketing, prior express *written* consent, meaning a signed (including electronic) agreement that clearly authorizes the calls to that number (47 CFR § 64.1200(a)(1)–(3) and the definition in § 64.1200(f)(9)).
• Sales calls to a number on the National Do Not Call Registry are prohibited unless you have given the seller signed written permission or have an established business relationship with it (§ 64.1200(c)(2)). Registration is free at DoNotCall.gov and does not expire.
• Telemarketers may not call before 8 a.m. or after 9 p.m. in your local time (§ 64.1200(c)(1)), must keep and honor a company-specific do-not-call list for people who ask them to stop (§ 64.1200(d)), and must identify the caller and provide a phone number or address at the start of a call (§ 64.1200(d)(4)).
• Prerecorded telemarketing messages must include an automated, interactive opt-out mechanism (§ 64.1200(b)(3)).
• Text messages are "calls" for TCPA purposes, so the same consent rules apply to marketing texts.

A 2023 FCC rule that would have required lead generators to obtain "one-to-one" consent — naming each individual seller — was vacated by the Eleventh Circuit in January 2025, so the older consent standards above continue to apply to leads gathered through comparison-shopping sites. Separately, the FCC's 2024 consent-revocation rule, in force since 2025, requires callers to honor a revocation made "in any reasonable manner" — replying STOP, saying so on a call, using a website form — within ten business days, and forbids designating an exclusive way to opt out.

Consent depends on the call

Consent is specific: it attaches to the number and purpose for which it was given, so a form agreeing to appointment reminders does not authorize marketing texts, and consent given to one company does not usually extend to its "partners" unless the disclosure said so. Consent can be revoked at any time by reasonable means, as above. Keep copies of the forms you signed, the texts you received and every opt-out request, with dates — in a dispute the facts of consent decide the case.

In 2021 the Supreme Court interpreted the TCPA's autodialer definition narrowly in Facebook v. Duguid: equipment must use a random or sequential number generator to count as an autodialer. That removed many dialer-based claims but did not touch the rules for prerecorded or artificial-voice calls (which is what nearly every robocall is), the Do Not Call rules, or state protections. In 2025 the Court also held, in McLaughlin Chiropractic v. McKesson, that district courts deciding private TCPA suits are not bound by the FCC's interpretations of the statute — which makes the outcome of some claims more dependent on the circuit you are in.

Document and report repeated calls

Save dates, times, voicemails, screenshots, opt-out messages and the identity the caller claimed. Do not assume the displayed number proves who called—caller ID can be spoofed. File unwanted-call complaints through the FCC complaint center and Do Not Call complaints through DoNotCall.gov. Those channels help regulators identify patterns but do not promise individual compensation.

The TCPA includes a private right of action: § 227(b)(3) allows $500 in statutory damages per violating call or text (or actual damages if greater), which a court may treble to $1,500 for willful or knowing violations, and § 227(c)(5) gives a similar remedy to anyone who receives more than one call in a 12-month period in violation of the Do Not Call rules. Eligibility and amounts depend on the evidence — consent, the technology used, who actually placed the call — and on the circuit's case law. Most robocall operations are also judgment-proof or unidentifiable; the FCC's enforcement actions, described in our enforcement guide, and the FTC's Telemarketing Sales Rule cases are how the large ones get shut down. If repeated calls from an identifiable company caused meaningful harm, consult a licensed consumer attorney in your state rather than relying on a lookup page or an online damages calculator.

What the complaint data adds is context. In the FTC's Do Not Call files this site ingests, 68% of the 289,439 complaints filed between July 27 and September 2, 2026 were about prerecorded calls — the category the TCPA's written-consent rule covers most strictly — and the single largest subject was debt relief (23%). A robocall you never consented to that pitches a debt program is unlawful on two grounds before it says a second sentence; the number's complaint history is the evidence that it was not only calling you.

Sources

1. 47 U.S.C. § 227 — Telephone Consumer Protection Act (Cornell LII)
2. 47 CFR § 64.1200 — FCC telemarketing and robocall rules (eCFR)
3. 16 CFR Part 310 — FTC Telemarketing Sales Rule (eCFR)
4. Facebook, Inc. v. Duguid, 592 U.S. ___ (2021)
5. FCC — Telemarketing and robocalls

Related

• National Do Not Call Registry
• Report unwanted calls
• How FCC robocall enforcement works
• Debt-relief robocalls

FAQs