The FCC moves to close 24 TCPA petitions, one of them 23 years old
FCC Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau · source ↗
The Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau released DA 26-867 on August 19, announcing its intention to dismiss twenty-four petitions with prejudice across CG Dockets 02-278, 05-338 and 17-59.
The stated reason: “To improve efficiency and reduce backlog, the Bureau seeks to determine whether the entities listed below remain interested in their petitions. Parties filed these petitions between 2003 and 2023, and they have gone without advocacy for several years. In addition, the specific matters to which they relate likely have been mooted or outdated by advancements in technology, changes in consumer preferences, or changes in regulations that have occurred since.”
A petitioner or any interested party has 45 days from Federal Register publication to file a letter objecting and giving reasons. Silence means dismissal with prejudice. Copies go to petitioners by certified mail.
The list is a tour of two decades of TCPA lobbying. Mark Boling filed the oldest on August 11, 2003. The U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform filed its petition for declaratory ruling on May 3, 2018 — the Chamber’s litigation-reform arm, not the Chamber proper. Also on it: RingCentral (2016), Anthem (2016), the Federal Housing Finance Agency (2017), Inovalon (2018), the American Bankers Association (2020), Assurance IQ (2020), the National Association of Chain Drug Stores (2020), Hustle (2022), DentalPlans.com (2023), and repeat individual filers Vincent Lucas, Todd Bank, Patrick Maupin and Mark Dobronski.
The Bureau cites its own recent precedent, DA 26-465 from May 12, which dismissed eleven petitions for reconsideration.
The notice has not appeared in the Federal Register, so the 45-day clock has not started. One objection is already on file anyway. Mark Dobronski filed a letter in CG 02-278 on August 20, the day after release, objecting to the dismissal of his own Petition for Clarification and Declaratory Ruling. That petition, filed December 13, 2023, is the newest of the twenty-four.
Docket 02-278 is being swept and worked at the same time. The July reply-comment round on the KYC FNPRM drew filings from CTIA, T-Mobile, TNS, Telnyx, TextNow, Pinger, ZipDX, the American Bankers Association, Consumer Reports and the consumer-groups coalition, all in 02-278. The dockets Regulatory Watch tracks filing-by-filing are the same dockets this notice is clearing.
Petitions that sat unanswered for eight, ten, twenty-three years are being closed for having sat unanswered. The Bureau is right that most of them are moot; it is also the party that let them go moot.