CASRO and MRA Back Petition for TCPA Change

American MR bodies CASRO and the MRA have filed a 'motion to intervene' in a court case against new telephone rules from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

Recent petitions in opposition to the new TCPA rules from three organizations - ACA International, Sirius XM Radio, and the Professional Association of Customer Engagement - have been consolidated into a single case before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit, and CASRO and MRA have filed a motion to intervene in the case to ensure the proceedings recognise and address the interests of researchers and research organizations.

The motion calls for the definition of an 'autodialer' in the FCC's new Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) rules to be 'clarified to focus on the current capacity to generate and dial random or sequential numbers, and/or clarified to exclude calls that involve human intervention in the dialing'.

According to CASRO President Diane Bowers, 'If the court rules in our favor, we could walk away with a more constrained autodialer definition and an applicable human intervention test - both of which could be major points of relief for the research industry'.

MRA's Howard Fienberg had warned in June that the new rules would lead to an upsurge in 'frivolous legal assaults' on research firms, and last week these fears appeared to be confirmed when polling firm Gallup agreed a $12m dollar settlement fund for a class action lawsuit claiming it called cell phones using an autodialer without consent - despite saying it has never auto-dialled a respondent on a cell phone.

The associations' new motion also calls for a change in the rule on reassigned numbers, which as of last month allows callers just one call to determine whether or not a previously consenting number has been reassigned to someone who does not consent to calls - whether or not that one call is answered or any kind of indication given that the change has occurred. The associations say that 'cell phone numbers change subscribers frequently, and without notice' and callers who have consent to dial a cell phone number 'should not be held liable if that number has been reassigned to a new subscriber unless the caller gains actual knowledge of the reassignment'.

The associations are online at www.marketingresearch.org and www.casro.org .

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.