Supreme Court Rules In Favor Of Facebook In Robocall Lawsuit

The U.S. Supreme Court sides with Facebook, Inc. FB in a case that accused the social media giant of violating a federal anti-robocall law.

What Happened: The lawsuit was filed by Montana resident Noah Duguid in California federal court in 2015. Duguid charged Facebook with sending him repeated text messages about an attempted log-in, even though he didn’t have an account on Facebook.

Duguid accused Facebook of violating the 1991 Telephone Consumer Protection Act, which was created to halt excessive telemarketing by putting a ban on most unauthorized robocalls. Duguid said he brought the lawsuit when he was unable to get Facebook to stop text messaging him.

The case was originally thrown out by a federal judge who noted the 1991 law’s definition of robocalling involved automated dialers that “store or produce telephone numbers to be called, using a random or sequential number generator.”

However, the case was revived by the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2019, which argued the law covered both the automatic dialing of randomly generated numbers and stored numbers that are not randomly generated, with Duguid’s case falling into the latter consideration.

What Happened Next: The Supreme Court ruled unanimously in Facebook’s favor, with Justice Sonia Sotomayor authoring the decision that faulted the lower court ruling by pointing out Facebook did not use the "random or sequential number generator" cited in the 1991 law.

"Because Facebook’s notification system neither stores nor produces numbers 'using a random or sequential number generator,' it is not an autodialer," Sotomayor wrote. "This definition excludes equipment like Facebook’s login notification system, which does not use such technology … Duguid's quarrel is with Congress, which did not define an autodialer as malleably as he would have liked."

(Photo courtesy SupremeCourt.gov)

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