A Florida federal court recently dismissed Do-Not-Call claims, holding that “a text message is not a ‘telephone call.’” Davis v. CVS Pharm., Inc., No. 24-0477, 2025 WL 2491195 (N.D. Fla. Aug. 26, 2025).
In Davis, the plaintiff alleged that CVS sent him unwanted text messages in violation of regulations prohibiting calls to individuals registered on the Do-Not-Call Registry. See 47 U.S.C. § 227(c)(5); 47 C.F.R. § 64.1200(c)(2).
The court explained that it must interpret the TCPA “in accord with the ordinary public meaning of its terms at the time of its enactment” and that, “if the text is clear, the analysis begins and ends there.” Finding that the text is clear, it then adopted CVS’s argument:
No normal person refers to a text message, or thinks of a text message, as a “call.” No ordinary user of the English language would write the sentence “John called Sue” intending to mean “John sent a text message to Sue,” nor would any ordinary reader interpret the sentence in that manner.
The court emphasized that Congress used the term “telephone calls” in Section 227(c)(5), and noted its use of “telephone call or messages” in neighboring TCPA provisions as evidence that “telephone call” alone does not encompass “messages.”
Additionally, the court rejected the idea that it should defer to the FCC’s 2003 order, which had stated that texts should be considered calls for certain TCPA purposes. Citing McLaughlin Chiropractic Assocs., Inc. v. McKesson Corp., 606 U.S. 146, 168 (2025), the court observed that, while it may provide appropriate “respect” to an agency’s view, it is not required to adopt “a statutory interpretation that conflicts with the ordinary public meaning of clear statutory text.”
This decision follows a similar recent ruling by a federal court in Illinois. With more courts now addressing the scope of the TCPA in light of recent Supreme Court decisions — including McLaughlin and Loper Bright Enters. v. Raimondo, 603 U.S. 369 (2024) — the landscape for TCPA litigation is rapidly evolving.
