[privacylawthrow]

These were already violations of the TCPA in the 9th Circuit under the 9th Circuit's previous ruling in Marks where the court found that an autodialer is any equipment that dials a number from a stored list.

Marks was used as precedent for this lawsuit. Facebook argued that this case was different from Marks. The Ninth Circuit found otherwise. SCOTUS appears to have shot down the ruling from Marks.

Marks was widely regarded as a terrible decision because it made no sense at the time. It's nice to see SCOTUS return some common sense to the law.

Note also that the TCPA allows for statutory damages of up to $1500 per violation, so it takes less than 675 calls/texts to rack up $1M in liability. Class action attorneys love it because they don't have to show damages. They only have to show that the call or text was sent using an autodialer.

[NovemberWhiskey]

Having now read Marks it now makes a whole lot more sense why this is in the Supreme Court; the Ninth Circuit seems to have gone off the deep end with that decision.

[andjd]

>Marks was widely regarded as a terrible decision because it made no sense at the time.

Citation? I've looked over _Marks_, and it doesn't seem unreasonable, and the 9th circuit was not the only court to adopt the same interpretation of the statute. I can see why certain industries would lothe that rule, but it doesn't seem to me that the Court's opinion is a fine, if not exemplary, example of legal interpretation. Similarly, it's far from clear that Congress intended that such behavior be permissible when they passed the law.

Honestly, _Marks_ makes more sense to me than the Supreme Court's interpretation does. Reading a law's text in the narrow and formal way that they did causes the law to be nonsensical.