Lead generators and the companies that rely on them can breathe a sigh of relief. On Friday evening, less than three days before an onerous regulation was set to go into effect, the Federal Communications Commission (“FCC”) reversed itself, postponing the effective date by twelve months, to January 26, 2026. The regulation, known as the One-to-One Consent Rule, would have drastically hampered the lead generation business by requiring consumers to be advised, at the time of their initial consent, what companies would have the right to solicit them, even if the consumers wished to make an open-ended request to receive, for example, text messages from the lowest bidder.
Failure to follow the One-to-One Consent Rule, which had already been published at 47 CFR § 64.1200(f)(9), would have exposed businesses to class-action lawsuits under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (“TCPA”) seeking $500 per call penalties if they sent text messages, automated phone calls or non-automated phone calls using recorded or AI technology.
The regulation was scheduled to take effect on January 27, 2025. The impetus for the change was an executive order signed by President Donald J. Trump on the day of his inauguration which gave government agencies, including the FCC, the discretion to postpone any regulation that had not yet gone into effect. Late on Friday afternoon, the FCC exercised that discretion. The FCC’s order can be seen here.
Shortly afterwards, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals issued a separate stay of the One-to-One Consent Rule, finding that the FCC never had the authority to issue the regulation in the first place. It wrote: “one need only ‘clearly and unmistakably’ state, before receiving the robocall, that he is willing to receive the robocall. One-to-one consent is not required. Because the one-to-one-consent restriction attempts to alter what we have said is the ordinary common law meaning of ‘prior express consent,’ the restriction falls outside the scope of the FCC’s statutory authority to implement the TCPA.” The Eleventh Circuit’s ruling was made in an action styled Insurance Marketing Coalition Limited v. FCC.
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