Ninth Circuit Refuses to Dismiss SMS TCPA DNC Case

Here is the short version before we wade into the alphabet soup: a federal court in Oregon, located within the Ninth Circuit, refused to toss out a text-message lawsuit under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA). The plaintiff said he received multiple marketing texts even though his number was on the National Do Not Call Registry. The defendant argued the messages were not really telemarketing and, more importantly, that a text message is not a “telephone call” for purposes of the TCPA’s do-not-call private right of action. The court disagreed and let the case move forward.

That may sound like a small procedural ruling, but in TCPA land, a denied motion to dismiss can feel like the starter pistol at a class-action marathon. And because the Supreme Court changed the way courts treat FCC interpretations in 2025, this decision suddenly matters a lot more than one ordinary Oregon dispute. It became part of a larger fight over a deceptively simple question: when Congress wrote “telephone call,” did it mean to capture modern SMS marketing too?

That question now sits at the center of one of the most interesting TCPA battles in years. For businesses, it is a compliance headache with a capital H. For consumers, it is a privacy case dressed up in statutory language. And for lawyers, it is the kind of statutory knife fight that keeps billable hours warm at night.

What Happened in the Oregon Case?

The case commonly discussed under the headline “Ninth Circuit Refuses to Dismiss SMS TCPA DNC Case” involved claims that telemarketing text messages were sent to a number listed on the National Do Not Call Registry. The plaintiff alleged he never had a business relationship with the sender, never opted in, and received multiple texts anyway. He also alleged the texting campaign was part of a broader marketing effort designed to push consumers toward the company’s financial products and services.

The defendant tried to knock out the complaint early. Its argument had two main parts. First, it said the texts were not “telephone solicitations” because they looked informational on their face. Second, it said the TCPA provision that creates a private lawsuit for do-not-call violations refers to “telephone calls,” not text messages. In other words: even if the texts were annoying, the statute supposedly did not give this plaintiff a private right to sue over them.

The Oregon court was not buying it. Instead, it held that the complaint plausibly alleged telemarketing and that unsolicited SMS messages can support a private claim under the TCPA’s do-not-call framework. Translation: lawsuit survives, discovery begins, and nobody gets to leave early.

Why the Court Refused to Dismiss the Case

The Messages Could Plausibly Be Telemarketing

One of the most important parts of the ruling had nothing to do with the word “text.” It had to do with the word “solicitation.” Under the TCPA and FCC rules, the legal question is not always whether a message says “buy now” in giant flashing letters. Courts often look at context. If a communication nudges the recipient toward a purchase, application, signup, or other commercial transaction, it may qualify as telemarketing even when the wording seems polite or indirect.

The Oregon court followed that common-sense approach. The defendant argued the texts merely helped complete an application that had already been started. But the plaintiff said he had no relationship with the company at all, and the court concluded it was plausible that the texts were part of a broader marketing campaign. The judge was especially unwilling to let a company avoid scrutiny by claiming the message was intended for some unidentified third party. Courts tend to get suspicious when a supposed “oops, wrong consumer” message still just happens to steer someone toward a commercial website.

That distinction matters because TCPA cases often turn on the line between transactional and promotional content. A genuine validation code or account-security message tied to a consumer’s own prior request may not be telemarketing. A text that looks “helpful” but actually funnels people toward a product, loan, or sale is a different animal. Same phone, same thumbs, very different liability.

The Court Said Texts Can Count as “Calls”

The bigger headline came from the court’s treatment of SMS itself. The defendant argued that the TCPA’s do-not-call private right of action, found in 47 U.S.C. § 227(c)(5), applies only when someone receives “more than one telephone call” in a 12-month period. Since Congress said “telephone call” instead of “text message,” the defendant said SMS claims should be out.

The Oregon court rejected that reading. It reasoned that Congress gave the FCC authority to implement the statute, and the FCC has long treated text messages as falling within the TCPA’s protections. The court also emphasized the broader privacy purpose of the law. Unwanted marketing texts may arrive silently, but they still invade personal space, consume attention, and disrupt daily life. The court essentially said: if the law is about protecting privacy from unwanted telemarketing, pretending texts do not count would be a triumph of semantics over reality.

That practical approach is one reason the decision drew so much attention. It did not treat SMS as some magical loophole where a company can do with thumbs what it could never do with robocalls.

Why This Ruling Became a Big Deal After McLaughlin

To understand why this case mattered so much, you have to zoom out. For years, many TCPA disputes were shaped by FCC orders and guidance. Courts often treated those agency interpretations as effectively controlling. Then came the Supreme Court’s 2025 decision in McLaughlin Chiropractic Associates v. McKesson Corp., which held that district courts in private TCPA litigation are not automatically bound by the FCC’s legal interpretations under the Hobbs Act.

That one decision changed the weather. Suddenly, defendants had more room to argue that older FCC readings stretched the statute too far. Plaintiffs, meanwhile, could still point to the FCC’s longstanding treatment of texts as covered communications, but courts were free to evaluate that reasoning independently rather than treating it as untouchable.

In other words, McLaughlin did not decide the SMS do-not-call question directly. What it did was remove a layer of judicial autopilot. After that, courts had to do more of their own statutory interpretation. And once judges started doing that, they did what judges sometimes do best: disagree.

The Same-Day Split That Turned a Motion Ruling Into National News

The Oregon decision became especially important because it landed the very same day as a federal ruling from Illinois that went the other way. In Jones v. Blackstone Medical Services, the Central District of Illinois dismissed TCPA do-not-call claims based on text messages, concluding that the private right of action in Section 227(c)(5) does not extend to SMS. That court took a more rigid textual approach, emphasizing that “telephone call” and “text message” are different things in ordinary speech.

So on the same day in July 2025, two federal courts looked at similar statutory language and reached opposite answers. That is the kind of split that makes compliance officers reach for coffee and makes litigators update their pitch decks.

The practical consequence is obvious: forum matters. If courts disagree about whether SMS can support a TCPA do-not-call claim, then where a case is filed can dramatically affect whether it survives. That creates uncertainty, encourages strategic venue choices, and makes nationwide texting campaigns even harder to manage.

How Ninth Circuit Case Law Helped Shape the Oregon Court’s Thinking

The Oregon court did not write on a blank slate. It was operating inside a circuit with a long history of treating text messages seriously under the TCPA.

Start with Satterfield v. Simon & Schuster, the Ninth Circuit’s well-known 2009 decision holding that a text message can qualify as a “call” under the TCPA. That case arose under a different subsection of the statute, but it still matters because it established a baseline understanding in the circuit: TCPA protections are not limited to voice communications.

Then there is Van Patten v. Vertical Fitness Group, where the Ninth Circuit said unsolicited telemarketing calls or text messages invade privacy and disturb the solitude of recipients. That privacy-centered language fits neatly with the purpose of the do-not-call rules. It supports the idea that the injury is not merely technical. People do not enjoy being pinged by marketing messages they never asked for, especially when those messages follow them everywhere their phones go.

The Ninth Circuit also helped shape the “residential subscriber” issue in Chennette v. Porch.com. There, the court recognized that a cell phone can still be treated as residential for TCPA do-not-call purposes, at least in many circumstances. That matters because modern consumers often use mobile numbers as their main personal contact number. If cell phones were categorically excluded from residential treatment, the do-not-call protections would shrink in a way that feels wildly out of step with how Americans actually communicate.

Even more recently, the Ninth Circuit in Howard v. Republican National Committee referred to a text message as a “call” in analyzing another TCPA issue. That does not resolve every do-not-call question, but it reinforces the broader point that Ninth Circuit doctrine does not treat SMS as some foreign object wholly outside the statute’s orbit.

The FCC’s Role Still Matters, Even if It Is No Longer Automatic

Although McLaughlin weakened automatic deference, the FCC did not suddenly vanish from the map. Its prior orders and rules still matter, especially when courts find them persuasive.

The FCC’s 2003 TCPA order said that autodialed “calls” to wireless numbers encompass both voice calls and text calls, including SMS. Then, in 2024, the FCC went further and codified that the National Do Not Call Registry’s protections extend to text messages. That same 2024 action also tightened opt-out timing by requiring company-specific do-not-call and consent-revocation requests to be honored within a reasonable time not exceeding 10 business days.

Those FCC moves do not magically answer every post-McLaughlin lawsuit. But they give courts plenty of regulatory history to work with, and they give businesses a blunt compliance message: acting as if text marketing is outside the TCPA is a risky gamble. Maybe a court will agree with you. Maybe it will not. That is not a great strategy memo.

What Businesses Should Learn From This Case

If your company uses SMS marketing, this ruling is not background noise. It is a flashing dashboard light. Even with the growing split in federal courts, the safest path is still conservative compliance.

• Treat marketing texts like high-risk communications. Do not assume SMS gets a lighter legal touch just because it is short and friendly.
• Separate transactional texts from promotional texts. A password reset or delivery notice is not the same as a product pitch wearing a fake mustache.
• Maintain written consent records. If consent exists, document who gave it, when, how, and for what type of messages.
• Honor STOP requests fast. The FCC’s current rules make delay harder to defend, and delay is the kind of small operational mistake that becomes expensive in aggregate.
• Keep internal do-not-call procedures current. Vendor texting programs, affiliate campaigns, and lead generators should all be audited regularly.
• Know your jurisdictions. A campaign that looks defensible in one federal district may face a rougher landing in another.

In short, businesses should not read the Illinois decision and decide the coast is clear. The better takeaway is that uncertainty itself creates risk. When courts split, clean compliance becomes even more valuable.

Why Consumers and Plaintiffs’ Lawyers Care So Much

On the consumer side, the logic is straightforward. Modern telemarketing often arrives by text, not by ringing landline. If the TCPA’s do-not-call protections applied only to classic voice calls, a large share of unwanted marketing could slip through a gap that feels more historical than sensible.

That is why plaintiffs have pushed hard on these claims. They argue that the core invasion is the same: a company reaches into a consumer’s private digital space with an unsolicited sales pitch after the consumer has already signaled, through registry enrollment or a STOP request, that the pitch is unwelcome. From that perspective, the medium changed but the nuisance did not.

And because the TCPA allows statutory damages, these cases can become high-stakes quickly. One text may be annoying. Thousands or millions of similar texts sent across a campaign can become existential litigation.

Real-World Experiences From the SMS TCPA DNC Battlefield

The legal debate can sound abstract until you map it onto what actually happens in the market. In practice, disputes like this usually begin with very ordinary consumer experiences. A person fills out a form somewhere, abandons it halfway, or never touches the brand at all. Weeks later, a marketing text pops up. Then another. Sometimes the message looks almost transactional: “finish your application,” “confirm your interest,” “complete your quote,” or “click here to continue.” But from the recipient’s perspective, the experience feels less like customer service and more like an unwanted tap on the shoulder from a stranger who somehow knows your number.

That is one reason these cases resonate. Consumers often describe the harm in small but familiar terms: annoyance, distraction, privacy intrusion, battery drain, time spent deleting messages, and the low-grade irritation of realizing your phone has become somebody else’s advertising space. None of those harms sounds dramatic on its own. Together, they explain why courts keep returning to the TCPA’s privacy purpose.

Businesses, on the other hand, often experience these disputes as operational failures rather than malicious campaigns. A lead vendor may pass along a number with questionable consent. A CRM system may keep texting after a STOP reply because one database updated and another did not. A marketing team may think a “complete your application” message is purely informational, while a court sees it as a commercial nudge. In-house lawyers then discover the painful truth: a compliance mistake that looked tiny in Slack can look enormous in a class complaint.

Another common experience involves mixed messaging inside companies. The legal department says “get clear consent and document everything.” Marketing says “speed matters.” Vendors say “our process is compliant.” Then a lawsuit arrives, and everyone suddenly becomes very interested in old screenshots, suppression files, and the exact wording of a two-line text sent eighteen months earlier. TCPA cases have a funny way of turning routine workflows into archaeological digs.

There is also a broader industry experience developing after McLaughlin. Before that decision, many companies believed the FCC’s guidance created a relatively stable playbook. Now the playbook is still there, but the refs do not all read it the same way. Some courts continue to view texts as covered calls under the do-not-call framework. Others say Congress never gave private plaintiffs that cause of action for SMS. That means compliance officers now have to plan for conflicting outcomes at the same time, which is about as relaxing as juggling knives in a wind tunnel.

For consumers, the experience is simpler: if you asked not to be contacted, you expect the messages to stop. For companies, the lesson is equally simple even if the law is messy: the safest texting program is one built on consent, speed, documentation, and a healthy fear of ambiguity. Courts can debate theory for months. A well-run opt-out system solves the practical problem in seconds.

Conclusion

The Oregon ruling did not end the national debate over whether SMS messages can support a TCPA do-not-call claim. But it did something almost as important: it confirmed that, at least in one influential court inside the Ninth Circuit, plaintiffs still have a viable path forward. The judge refused to treat text marketing as categorically outside the statute and instead leaned on the TCPA’s privacy goals, FCC history, and existing Ninth Circuit logic treating texts as meaningful TCPA events.

That makes this case more than a procedural footnote. It is a marker in the post-McLaughlin landscape, where courts are re-reading the TCPA with fresh eyes and reaching very different answers. Until appellate courts or Congress provide clearer direction, businesses should assume SMS marketing remains dangerous territory under do-not-call law. Consumers, meanwhile, can expect the courts to keep wrestling with whether a modern text should be treated like an old-school call. In everyday life, most people know the difference. In TCPA litigation, that difference may decide millions of dollars.