Tag: compliance

A new federal lawsuit could significantly reshape how businesses, AI platforms, and telecommunications providers share responsibility for unsolicited marketing messages under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA).

In Lowry v. OpenAI, et al., a Virginia consumer is seeking to hold OpenAI and Twilio directly liable for marketing text messages that he says he received from a third-party company called Fresh Start Group. The messages, according to the complaint, were generated using OpenAI’s platform and delivered through Twilio’s telephony infrastructure.

The novel feature of the case is not the messages themselves. It is the legal theory: that the AI platform and the communications provider can be liable for the actions of a downstream business customer.

The legal theory in plain language

Under the TCPA, a party can be liable if it ’causes’ a call or text to be initiated — not only if it dials the number itself. The Lowry complaint argues that, by providing the AI tools that drafted the messages and the telephone numbers that delivered them, OpenAI and Twilio each played a role in causing the communications and should share liability with the company that actually sent them.

The proposed class is large. It would include every consumer in the United States who received a marketing message generated using the OpenAI platform when the recipient’s number was registered on the National Do Not Call list and OpenAI did not have consent to send the message. With statutory damages of $500 per call and a four-year TCPA lookback period, the theoretical exposure runs into the trillions of dollars.

Regulatory context

The Federal Communications Commission has been moving in the same direction for several years. In 2024, the FCC unanimously ruled that AI-generated voices used in calls are subject to the TCPA, treating them the same as conventional prerecorded voice. Twilio received an FCC cease-and-desist letter in 2024 related to allegedly enabling illegal robocall traffic on its network. The Lowry case extends that pressure from regulators to the courts.

What businesses should take away

Even businesses that have no direct relationship with OpenAI or Twilio should pay attention. If the platform-liability theory succeeds — even partially — it will reshape vendor relationships across the technology stack. Some likely effects:

— AI and communications providers will tighten their customer contracts, requiring more rigorous consent attestation and audit rights into customer data.

— Businesses using AI to scale outbound communications will face more pressure to document, in detail, the consent basis for every number contacted.

— Insurance carriers may reprice cyber and tech-errors policies to reflect the expanded scope of potential platform-side liability.

— Plaintiffs’ attorneys will continue moving up the technology stack, naming more vendors and infrastructure providers in TCPA complaints to capture larger settlement pools.

Steps businesses can take now

Regardless of how the Lowry case ultimately resolves, businesses that send marketing calls or texts can take several concrete steps to reduce risk:

— Maintain comprehensive, time-stamped records of consent for every number in any outbound campaign, including the source, the channel of consent, and the scope of that consent.

— Regularly scrub call and text lists against the National Do Not Call Registry, internal do-not-call lists, and known TCPA litigator databases.

— Audit any use of AI-generated communications to confirm that the underlying contact list has consent appropriate to the channel (call, voicemail, text) and to the type of message (marketing vs. transactional).

— Review vendor contracts with CPaaS, AI, and lead-generation providers to understand who bears liability if a regulator or plaintiff’s attorney comes calling.

For businesses that depend on phone or text outreach — from local service providers to national brands — basic list hygiene has become a core compliance step. TCPALitigatorList.com provides an industry database of known TCPA litigators and serial plaintiffs that companies can use to screen call and text lists before they dial. Catching a handful of high-risk numbers up front is a far cheaper alternative than defending a class action after the fact.

A pivotal moment for AI-era marketing

The Lowry v. OpenAI lawsuit is a significant test of how the TCPA — a statute drafted in 1991, long before generative AI or modern CPaaS platforms existed — will be applied to a layered, vendor-driven outbound communications stack. Whether the case ultimately succeeds, settles, or is dismissed, it has already established that platform-liability theories are available to plaintiffs’ attorneys.

For businesses using AI-driven communications, the prudent course is to assume the legal landscape has shifted and to build consent, recordkeeping, and vendor-management practices that would survive a Lowry-style challenge.

Sources

National Law Review: TCPA Complaint Against OpenAI and Twilio
Henson Legal: AI Voice Agent Compliance and Platform Liability
FCC: TCPA Applies to AI-Generated Voices

Ringless voicemail — a marketing technique that delivers prerecorded voice messages directly to a consumer’s voicemail inbox without ringing the phone — is generating a fresh wave of class-action lawsuits under the federal Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA). Two recent cases in 2026 show just how expensive the technique has become for businesses that don’t have proper consent in place.

$6.5 million settlement for a tech company

National Retail Solutions (NRS), a point-of-sale technology provider for independent retailers, has agreed to pay more than $6.5 million to resolve a TCPA class action alleging it used ringless voicemail technology to market its services without the consent the law requires.

The settlement class is limited to consumers who received messages sent through a single ringless voicemail provider — yet it still contains more than 50,000 class members. Each is set to receive approximately $100 or more from the settlement fund.

The case is notable not because the technology was unusual, but because it was so ordinary. NRS used a commercially available ringless voicemail tool the way many businesses do — as a low-cost, high-deliverability outreach channel — without the kind of consent records the TCPA demands for a prerecorded marketing message.

Small businesses are not immune

A second case making waves involves a Las Vegas realtor who used the GoHighLevel marketing platform to send ringless voicemails to owners of expired real-estate listings. A federal court certified a TCPA class action against her, finding the voicemails qualified as prerecorded calls under the statute and that she had no documentation of consent from the class members.

The practical takeaway: TCPA exposure scales with campaign volume, not company size. A single-agent business running a high-volume ringless voicemail campaign can face the same statutory damages as a national corporation. With statutory penalties of $500 to $1,500 per call, the financial risk for any small business can quickly become existential.

Why courts keep ruling against ringless voicemail

The Federal Communications Commission settled the regulatory question in 2022. In a Declaratory Ruling, the FCC held that ringless voicemails to wireless phones are ‘calls’ under the TCPA because they use an artificial or prerecorded voice. That places them squarely within the statute’s most restrictive consent rules, which require prior express written consent for marketing communications.

Courts have followed the FCC’s lead consistently. A 2025 federal decision in Taylor v. Kit Insurance held that allegations that voicemails were identical across recipients are enough, by themselves, to plausibly allege a prerecorded call — meaning a plaintiff can survive a motion to dismiss with little more than the messages themselves.

What businesses should do

Companies that use or are considering ringless voicemail as part of their marketing or outreach strategy should take several steps:

— Confirm that every recipient has provided prior express written consent specifically for prerecorded marketing voice messages on the wireless phone receiving the voicemail.

— Maintain documented, time-stamped, source-traceable consent records that can be produced in litigation or in response to a regulator’s request.

— Scrub recipient lists against the National Do Not Call Registry and the company’s own internal do-not-call list before each campaign.

— Honor opt-outs across all systems and all outbound channels — not just the channel on which the opt-out was received.

For businesses that depend on phone or text outreach — from local service providers to national brands — basic list hygiene has become a core compliance step. TCPALitigatorList.com provides an industry database of known TCPA litigators and serial plaintiffs that companies can use to screen call and text lists before they dial. Catching a handful of high-risk numbers up front is a far cheaper alternative than defending a class action after the fact.

The bigger compliance picture

The NRS settlement and the GoHighLevel case are part of a much larger surge in TCPA class-action filings. More TCPA class actions have been filed in the first quarter of 2026 than in any quarter in history. Plaintiffs’ attorneys are increasingly sophisticated, marketing platforms are increasingly powerful, and the cost of getting consent wrong is increasingly high.

For businesses that depend on outbound marketing to drive growth, the ringless voicemail wave is a reminder that there are no quiet channels left. Every form of outbound contact — call, text, voicemail — carries the same compliance burden, and the same risk if that burden isn’t met.

Sources

National Law Review: $6.5M Ringless Voicemail Settlement
TCPAWorld: GoHighLevel Realtor RVM Class Action
FCC: Ringless Voicemails Subject to TCPA

Tennessee businesses — and any company that places automated calls or text messages to Tennessee residents — are about to face a new set of state oversight rules.

The Tennessee General Assembly unanimously passed House Bill 2408 and its companion Senate Bill 2659, a measure that adds a new oversight mechanism to the state’s existing telephone and text-message solicitation framework. The vote was 94-0 in the House on April 6, 2026, and 33-0 in the Senate on April 21, 2026. The bill was signed by the Speaker on April 30 and transmitted to Governor Bill Lee on May 7. If signed by the Governor, it will apply to conduct occurring on or after July 1, 2026.

What the law does

HB 2408 / SB 2659 amends Tennessee Code to add new reporting obligations, recordkeeping requirements, and solicitation limits specifically targeted at automated telemarketing. The aim is to give state regulators visibility into businesses running large-scale automated outbound campaigns directed at Tennessee residential subscribers — visibility that the existing framework did not provide.

Tennessee already restricts unwanted telephone and text solicitations and operates its own no-call enforcement regime. The new law layers a transparency mechanism on top of that, so the state can identify and act against problematic automated callers more quickly.

Which businesses are affected

Any business that uses automated dialers, prerecorded voice messages, or mass-text platforms to contact Tennessee phone numbers is potentially in scope. That includes industries that rely heavily on outbound communications, such as financial services, insurance, home services, mortgage lending, retail and e-commerce, healthcare scheduling and reminders, and lead-generation businesses operating across multiple states.

Small operators may also be affected if they run automated campaigns at any meaningful volume. The law is structured around the use of automated technology, not the size of the business.

What businesses should do before July 1

Companies that may fall under the new law have roughly six weeks to prepare. A practical preparation list includes:

— Reviewing the volume and nature of automated calls and texts being sent to Tennessee numbers, and confirming whether the business falls within the new reporting scope.

— Auditing consent records to make sure every Tennessee contact has a documented, time-stamped basis for receiving automated communications.

— Examining vendor relationships with dialer providers, SMS platforms, and lead generators to confirm those vendors can support the new recordkeeping obligations.

— Updating internal do-not-call list management procedures to ensure opt-outs are honored quickly and consistently across all outbound systems.

For businesses that depend on phone or text outreach — from local service providers to national brands — basic list hygiene has become a core compliance step. TCPALitigatorList.com provides an industry database of known TCPA litigators and serial plaintiffs that companies can use to screen call and text lists before they dial. Catching a handful of high-risk numbers up front is a far cheaper alternative than defending a class action after the fact.

Part of a larger national trend

Tennessee’s move is part of a broader national pattern in which state legislatures and attorneys general are stepping in as the federal regulatory environment for telemarketing eases. The FCC has proposed scaling back several long-standing rules, including its controversial revoke-all consent rule, while states have moved the other way — raising penalties, expanding enforcement authority, and creating new oversight regimes.

New York recently raised its DNC fine ceiling to $20,000 per violation. Mississippi shifted no-call enforcement to its Attorney General. A 51-state Anti-Robocall Litigation Task Force is coordinating multi-state actions against repeat violators. Tennessee’s new oversight law fits squarely within that trend.

For businesses that rely on phone and text outreach as part of their customer acquisition or retention programs, the message from states like Tennessee is clear: visibility, accountability, and documentation are no longer optional.

Sources

TCPAWorld: Tennessee’s New Solicitation Oversight Law
Receivables Info: Tennessee Legislature Approves New Automated Telemarketing Restrictions
National Law Review: Tennessee Adds Oversight Mechanism to Solicitation Framework

Real estate brokerage eXp Realty has lost another round in a sprawling Telephone Consumer Protection Act class action, with a federal judge in Washington state denying the company’s request to stay the case in early May 2026. The ruling pushes Usanovic v. eXp Realty — a certified class covering unsolicited calls placed by eXp agents over a roughly four-year period — closer to trial, and stands as a warning to any business that operates through a network of independent agents.

How the case got here

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, alleges that eXp agents used third-party dialing platforms — including Mojo and Vulcan7 — to place unsolicited telemarketing calls to consumers between May 2019 and September 2023. In March 2026, the court certified a class covering the period, finding common questions of fact and law sufficient to proceed as a class action.

A particularly consequential earlier ruling in the case held that eXp Realty itself could be directly liable for calls made by its agents, even though those agents are independent contractors rather than employees. That holding cracked open a defense that companies in real estate, insurance, financial services, and other agent-driven industries have long relied on: the notion that the corporate entity is insulated from the calling conduct of independent reps.

The May 2026 stay denial

In the latest ruling, the court rejected eXp’s motion to pause the case pending various procedural challenges. With the stay denied, the case proceeds toward trial — meaning eXp faces potential exposure of $500 to $1,500 per violating call across a large class. The company has already paid $26.9 million to settle an earlier TCPA matter, an indicator of the cumulative cost that can attach to companies with this kind of agent-driven outbound calling footprint.

Why this resonates beyond real estate

The legal framework that’s tightening around eXp applies to a much broader set of industries. Any company whose business model depends on individuals — independent contractors, franchisees, channel partners, MLM distributors — making outbound calls on behalf of the brand may be at similar risk. Courts are increasingly willing to look past contractual labels and examine the operational reality of the relationship: who provides the leads, who controls the technology, who sets the script, who runs the training.

For consumer-facing industries, the trend has implications for how distributed sales models should be structured going forward. Companies that delegate calling to agents but retain control over lead sourcing, dialer technology, or messaging are now operating in a legal environment that may treat them as principals for TCPA purposes — regardless of how the underlying employment relationship is documented.

The broader TCPA enforcement picture

The eXp case is one of several recent developments signaling that TCPA litigation is intensifying rather than easing in 2026. Class action filings remain elevated compared to historical norms, courts are increasingly scrutinizing consent claims and agency relationships, and plaintiffs’ counsel have grown more sophisticated about identifying corporate defendants with deeper pockets behind decentralized calling operations.

For business leaders, the takeaway is that compliance with the TCPA is no longer something that can be safely outsourced along with the calling itself. The cost of getting it wrong — measured in both settlements and ongoing legal expense — is becoming significant enough that proactive auditing of agent calling practices is now a basic risk-management discipline.

Companies that contact consumers by phone or text increasingly screen their outbound lists against databases of known TCPA plaintiffs before dialing. Services such as TCPALitigatorList.com compile numbers tied to serial filers and frequent class-action plaintiffs, and a quick pre-call check against that list can keep a business out of expensive litigation it never should have been in.

What’s next

With the stay denied, Usanovic v. eXp Realty is expected to move into pretrial proceedings on the merits. Industry observers will be watching closely — both for the outcome itself and for any further guidance the court provides on the standards for holding corporate principals liable for the calling conduct of independent agents. For companies with similar structures, the time to revisit those structures is not after the next adverse ruling, but now.

Sources

TCPAWorld reporting on stay denial (May 1, 2026); Usanovic v. eXp Realty, 2026 WL 864633 (W.D. Wash. March 30, 2026); reporting on prior $26.9M eXp TCPA settlement.

A federal judge in Tennessee has handed companies facing Telephone Consumer Protection Act lawsuits a meaningful procedural win, and businesses across industries that rely on outbound calling or texting should take note. In a ruling issued May 11, 2026, U.S. District Judge Katherine A. Crytzer denied a TCPA plaintiff’s request to delay summary judgment in Brockington v. Hume Health, LLC, the case clearing the way for the defendant’s consent defense to be decided on the existing record.

The case in brief

Plaintiff Sheri Butler Brockington alleged that Hume Health, a wellness company, called and texted her in violation of the TCPA and rules surrounding the National Do Not Call Registry. Hume Health responded by moving for summary judgment, presenting evidence that Brockington had filled out a Facebook lead form and clicked a “SIGN UP” button containing consent language authorizing the company’s outreach.

Rather than directly contesting the consent evidence, Brockington asked the court to invoke Rule 56(d) — a procedural mechanism that lets a party defer summary judgment when they can show that additional discovery is needed to oppose the motion. The judge denied the request, ruling that Brockington had failed to identify specific facts she expected discovery to uncover or explain why those facts were essential to her opposition.

Why business leaders should care

TCPA class actions have become one of the most reliably expensive forms of consumer litigation in the United States. The statute provides for damages of $500 to $1,500 per call or text, and class certifications routinely produce settlements in the seven- and eight-figure range. For businesses, the cost of defending these cases — often regardless of merit — is itself a major driver of settlement.

One reason defense costs run so high is that plaintiffs frequently use discovery to expand the record and increase pressure to settle. A court that requires plaintiffs to articulate specific, concrete reasons they need more discovery — rather than allowing open-ended fishing expeditions — shifts that dynamic. Companies with clean records of consent at the point of contact stand to benefit; companies whose lead-capture documentation is thin or inconsistent are still exposed.

What good documentation looks like

Hume Health’s defense rests on a piece of evidence that many businesses assume they have but often cannot produce on demand: the raw record of a consumer interacting with a lead form. That record typically includes the form fields completed, the disclosure language displayed at the moment of submission, the timestamp, the IP address, and (in the case of paid lead sources) the originating ad creative.

Businesses that buy leads from third-party vendors are especially vulnerable to gaps here. Many vendors retain submission data only for a limited period — sometimes as short as 90 days — even though TCPA claims can reach back four years. When the underlying record is gone, the defense becomes much harder, regardless of how strong the consent was at the time of capture.

A broader trend in TCPA litigation

The Brockington decision arrives as TCPA filings continue to grow. Year-to-date class action filings through the first quarter of 2026 ran roughly 19 percent above 2025 levels, with monthly records being broken in some categories. Federal courts have been increasingly willing in recent months to scrutinize the merits of TCPA claims at earlier stages — a trend that includes the Fifth Circuit’s rejection of the FCC’s “prior express written consent” rule earlier this year and now this Eastern District of Tennessee ruling on Rule 56(d) standards.

For consumer-facing companies, the message is consistent across these decisions: the legal landscape is rewarding businesses that invest in robust consent documentation and pre-call screening, and punishing those that treat compliance as an afterthought.

Companies that contact consumers by phone or text increasingly screen their outbound lists against databases of known TCPA plaintiffs before dialing. Services such as TCPALitigatorList.com compile numbers tied to serial filers and frequent class-action plaintiffs, and a quick pre-call check against that list can keep a business out of expensive litigation it never should have been in.

What to watch next

The actual summary judgment motion in Brockington is now expected to be decided in the coming weeks. If the court rules in Hume Health’s favor, it will be a meaningful data point for defendants weighing whether early dispositive motions are worth filing in TCPA cases. Either way, the Rule 56(d) ruling stands as a signal that federal courts are willing to push back on the procedural tactics that have historically made TCPA litigation so expensive to defend.

Sources

Brockington v. Hume Health, LLC, 3:25-cv-00161 (E.D. Tenn. May 11, 2026); reporting from National Law Review and Justia dockets.