/>iGreetings TCPAWorld!
The Supreme Court dropped another surprise that’s about to turn everything upside down again. See McLaughlin Chiropractic Assocs. v. McKesson Corp., No. 23-1226, 2025 U.S. LEXIS 2385 (June 20, 2025). McLaughlin was not, in turn, about autodialers at all—it was about whether courts must consider FCC interpretations under the Hobbs Act. But what about the ripple effects for automatic telephone dialing systems (“ATDS”)? Absolutely, potentially massive.
For the past four years, we’ve all been living in the post-Facebook (Facebook, Inc. v. Duguid, 592 U.S. 395 (2021)) world where everyone pretty much agreed on what an automatic telephone dialing system actually means. The Supreme Court seemed to settle the matter: to qualify as an ATDS, your equipment must have the capacity to store or produce telephone numbers using a random or sequential number generator and then dial those numbers.
That narrow interpretation was huge for businesses that had been facing significant challenges from TCPA class actions. Before this clarification, plaintiff attorneys were arguing that any system capable of storing phone numbers and dialing them automatically—such as a smartphone, a basic CRM system, or even predictive dialers calling from customer lists—could qualify as an ATDS. The Supreme Court’s grammatical analysis put an end to that madness by concluding that “using a random or sequential number generator” modifies both “store” and “produce,” meaning you need the random generation component for either function.
But here’s where McLaughlin comes in and changes everything we think we already know. Justice Kavanaugh’s majority opinion established a principle that will reshape how every TCPA case is litigated: district courts must independently interpret statutes under ordinary principles of statutory construction, giving only “appropriate respect” to agency interpretations. This is not a minor shift at all, as it explicitly disclaims the view that district courts are bound by FCC interpretations in private TCPA actions. WOW!
Now let’s not put the cart before the horse. That means the FCC no longer controls how district courts interpret the TCPA, although its guidance may still be considered persuasive.
This represents a gigantic shift from the old days, when FCC orders interpreting the TCPA were treated as binding under Hobbs Act jurisdictional preclusion. District courts previously could not disagree with FCC interpretations because challenges had to go to the courts of appeals. Now, following McLaughlin and last year’s Loper Bright decision, which eliminated Chevron deference entirely, federal judges must do the hard work of statutory interpretation themselves.
So what does this mean for ATDS? While Facebook settled the core definition at the Supreme Court level, there were still plenty of gray areas that the FCC had been filling in with guidance and interpretations. Now, district courts can look at those same issues with fresh eyes. See the challenge here? This will no doubt create new circuit splits and ALOT more unpredictability.
Post-McLaughlin, one district court might look at the statutory text and decide that “capacity” means what you can do right now, not what you could theoretically do with software modifications. Another court three states over might stick closer to the FCC’s broader interpretation. Yet another might split the difference and require some middle ground between current functionality and theoretical potential. Suddenly, we’re back to forum shopping and conflicting precedents across jurisdictions, with plaintiffs rushing to file in friendly districts while defendants attempt to relocate cases to more favorable venues.
Then there’s the question of human intervention. FCC guidance has generally stated that if a human must initiate every call, you’re probably not dealing with an ATDS. But how much human involvement is enough? What if a person loads the contact list, but the system dials automatically? What about click-to-call platforms where humans trigger each individual call? These cases, which seemed settled under FCC guidance, are now fair game for independent judicial interpretation.
The world of predictive dialing is an exciting one. Modern predictive dialers that operate from stored customer lists were largely exempted after Facebook, as they don’t use random generation. But there are still cases—systems that use algorithms to select numbers sequentially within targeted lists, or platforms that employ some mathematical progression that might arguably qualify as “sequential.” Without FCC deference, creative plaintiff attorneys can argue these distinctions to judges who might see things differently than the agency.
And don’t get me started on platform-specific technologies. Peer-to-peer texting systems, automated appointment scheduling, click-to-call functionality—all these technologies that the FCC has weighed in on over the years are now subject to fresh judicial analysis. A district judge unfamiliar with a specific platform may interpret the statutory language differently from an agency with telecommunications expertise.
The implications extend beyond federal courts as well. It’s only fitting that I talk about Florida, my home state. Florida’s Telephone Solicitation Act (“FTSA”) is likely the best example of how states have been attempting to fill the gap and narrow the federal interpretation. The FTSA initially defined prohibited technology as “an automated system for the selection or dialing of telephone numbers”—notice the “or” instead of “and,” and the complete absence of any random or sequential number generation requirement.
Florida amended the law in 2023 to require systems that both select and dial numbers; however, this still doesn’t incorporate the TCPA’s requirement for random or sequential number generation. You’ve got a peculiar situation where technology that’s perfectly legal under federal law may still be considered a violation of Florida state law. The McLaughlin principle doesn’t directly affect how state courts interpret state statutes. Still, it certainly signals a broader trend toward judicial skepticism of agency interpretations that extend beyond what the actual statutory text states.
Speaking of that trend, we just saw another example play out in real time. The Eleventh Circuit’s decision in Insurance Marketing Coalition v. FCC struck down the FCC’s one-to-one consent rule, essentially telling the agency that it had overstepped its authority. See Ins. Mktg. Coal. Ltd. v. FCC, 127 F.4th 303 (11th Cir. 2025). The reasoning there—that agencies can only “reasonably define” statutory provisions without altering them—sounds awfully similar to the McLaughlin approach.
So, how will this ultimately play out? I’m glad you asked. For defense attorneys, McLaughlin opens up a whole new playbook. Instead of having to work around FCC interpretations of ATDS scenarios, you can now argue directly from statutory text and context. Got a client using technology that stores numbers but doesn’t generate them randomly? Make the textual argument. Using a system with human intervention that the FCC once deemed “automated”? Point the court to the text. Using some algorithmic selection that doesn’t quite fit the random/sequential concept? Time to get creative with statutory interpretation.
The flip side is that plaintiff attorneys also gain new opportunities. They can argue for broader textual interpretations of ATDS without having to overcome existing FCC guidance. The whole question of what “capacity,” “production,” and “storage” mean in the context of modern technology is back on the table.
From a compliance perspective, this creates a much more complex landscape. It used to be that if you followed FCC guidance, you had a pretty good safe harbor. Now you’ve got to think about how different district courts in different jurisdictions might independently interpret the same statutory language. For instance, compliance that works perfectly in the Ninth Circuit might change drastically in the Fifth Circuit, not because the law changed, but because different judges reached different conclusions about what Congress meant when it wrote about ATDS.
This all fits into the constraining of administrative power and the return of interpretive authority to the judiciary. Following Loper Bright’s elimination of Chevron deference and McLaughlin’s limitation of Hobbs Act preclusion, we’re witnessing a fundamental rebalancing toward judicial supremacy in statutory interpretation. Bottom line for anyone in the TCPA space, this means possibly less predictability in the short term, but potentially more sophisticated, text-based analysis over time. Exciting stuff!
