This week, the Court addresses the constitutionality of a nearly $1 billion statutory damages award under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) and revives a California state law whistleblower claim.
The Court holds a defendant waived reliance on the FCC’s retroactive exemption and remands for the district court to assess the constitutionality of a nearly $1 billion statutory damages award.
The panel: Judges Berzon, Tallman, and Christen, with Judge Tallman writing the opinion.
Key highlight: “Constitutional limits on aggregate statutory damages awards therefore must be reserved for circumstances in which a largely punitive per-violation amount results in an aggregate that is gravely disproportionate to and unreasonably related to the legal violation committed. Were that not so, applying the Williams test to reduce aggregated statutory awards would overstep the role of the judiciary and usurp the power of the legislature.”
Background: The TCPA makes it unlawful to initiate robocalls using any “automatic telephone dialing system or an artificial or prerecorded voice” without the “prior express consent” of the recipient. It authorizes recipients of such calls to sue for either actual damages or $500 per violation. The FCC had previously issued a rule defining “prior express consent” to encompass any instance in which the recipients of a robocall had previously given the caller their phone numbers “for a purpose related to the subject of the calls.” But in 2012 the...
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