Legal Court Rules Spam Texts Aren’t “Spam Calls”, Therefore they’re 100% legal

What Actually Happened

People who received repeated marketing texts from Blackstone Medical Services, a company selling home sleep tests, say they did everything they were told to do to make it stop. They replied “STOP.” They added their numbers to the National Do-Not-Call Registry. The texts allegedly kept coming.

They sued under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, the main federal law meant to stop exactly this kind of harassment. A federal district court, and then the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, threw the case out. Not because the court decided the texts didn’t happen or weren’t unwanted. The court threw it out because the specific piece of the law they sued under only covers phone calls, and a text message is not, by this court’s reading, a call.

The Non-Financial Ledger

The people in this case describe being “frustrated by an onslaught of marketing text messages”, the court’s own words for what drove them to sue in the first place. That is not a small thing. Opting out of contact is supposed to be a floor, a baseline right to be left alone once you’ve said no. Allegedly having that ignored, repeatedly, by a company selling you something, is a documented breach of the one boundary consumers are told they can rely on.

Then the legal system added a second injury on top of the first. These plaintiffs never got a hearing on whether Blackstone actually did what they say it did. Their case was dismissed on a technical reading of one word in one subsection of a 1991 statute, before a judge or jury ever weighed the facts. They followed every rule consumers are told to follow, and the door was closed before their evidence was ever heard.

Legal Receipts

“The plaintiffs assert that they continued to receive these texts and calls even though they indicated (e.g., by replying “STOP” to a text message or by adding themselves to the National Do-Not-Call Registry) that they did not want to be contacted.”

• This is the court’s own summary of the allegation at the center of the case: repeated contact after explicit, documented opt-out.
• It confirms the plaintiffs used both mechanisms consumers are told will work, a direct reply and registry enrollment, and allege neither stopped the contact.

“Text messages do not reproduce sounds, suggesting that they do not qualify as a new application of telephone call within the meaning of that term.”

• This sentence is the entire legal foundation for dismissing the case: a dictionary definition of “call” from 1991 that never anticipated texting.
• It shows the ruling turned on the literal mechanics of sound reproduction, not on whether the alleged conduct was harmful or intended to harass.

“In doing so, the FCC has interpreted “call” to include text messages, though it has not engaged in rulemaking to define the term for the purpose of § 227(c)(5).”

• The federal agency actually responsible for enforcing telemarketing protections already treats texts as covered.
• The court acknowledges this disagreement openly and rules against the broader interpretation anyway, on the narrow ground that the FCC hadn’t formally extended it to this one specific subsection.

“Repeated, unwanted text messages are undoubtedly a nuisance. But they do not fall within the private right of action created by § 227(c)(5).”

• The court concedes the core consumer complaint is legitimate in the same sentence it closes the courthouse door on it.
• It confirms that, in this circuit, individuals cannot personally sue over this conduct; enforcement is left entirely to regulatory agencies.

Regulatory Gray Zones

This case exists because of a gap between what a 1991 law says and how marketing works in 2026, and the court chose to enforce that gap to the letter.

• The TCPA’s private right of action in § 227(c)(5) covers only “telephone calls,” a term the court tied to its 1991 dictionary meaning: a communication that reproduces sound. Text messages, which didn’t exist until the following year, fall outside that definition on the court’s own terms.
• Congress used the broader phrase “telephone solicitation” (covering both calls and messages) in the neighboring rulemaking and Do-Not-Call Registry provisions of § 227(c). But § 227(c)(5) itself was written using only the narrower word “call.” The court treated that word choice as deliberate, closing off text-message suits under this one provision.
• The FCC already extends National Do-Not-Call Registry protection to text messages under a separate part of the same statute, § 227(c)(3). Because that interpretation wasn’t issued specifically for § 227(c)(5), the court ruled it doesn’t apply here, splitting one law so the same word means different things depending on which sentence you’re reading.
• Other federal circuits, the First, Second, Ninth, and Eleventh, have all found text messages count as “calls” under a different TCPA provision, § 227(b). This ruling creates a jurisdiction-specific gap: the same alleged conduct could be sued over in one circuit and dismissed in another.

This Is the System Working as Intended

Nothing here required a company to break the law. It required a law written for a world before texting to never catch up, and a court willing to enforce that gap exactly as written.

• The court warned that “[t]oo much ‘liberality’ will undermine the statute” and refused to read § 227(c)(5) to match modern texting habits, even while accepting the same subsection already covers more than 1990s-era landline calls.
• The ruling pushes enforcement of unwanted text messages entirely onto “agency action”, meaning individuals harassed by unwanted marketing texts have no direct path to sue under this provision. They must wait on the FCC to act on their behalf.
• The court itself noted Congress has already amended other parts of § 227 to explicitly add text messages, in 2018 and again in 2019, but left § 227(c)(5) untouched. The fix already exists as a template. It just hasn’t been applied to the one subsection these plaintiffs needed.

What a Legitimate Fix Looks Like

This case exposes a specific, fixable gap: one word in one subsection of a 34-year-old law hasn’t caught up to how marketing actually reaches people.

What Now?

The court left enforcement of this conduct entirely in regulators’ hands, so that’s where public pressure needs to go next.

• Watchlist: FCC, the federal agency with rulemaking authority over the TCPA and the National Do-Not-Call Registry.
• Watchlist: FTC, which handles broader unfair and deceptive marketing practice complaints, including unwanted text campaigns.
• File a complaint at donotcall.gov or with the FCC if you’re still receiving unwanted marketing texts after opting out. Individual lawsuits like this one can’t proceed in the Seventh Circuit, but regulatory complaints build the record agencies need to act.
• Contact your member of Congress and ask them to support closing the § 227(c)(5) gap the same way lawmakers already closed it in § 227(e) and § 227(i).
• Support state-level consumer protection statutes, like the Florida Telephone Solicitation Act referenced in this case, since state law can sometimes reach conduct federal law currently can’t.