Florida Adopts Modifications to the Florida Phone Solicitation Act

Final month, Florida governor Ron DeSantis signed into regulation amendments to the Florida Phone Solicitation Act (FTSA) that cut back the scope and attain of the statute, bringing it consistent with federal TCPA requirements and offering wanted consolation to good religion advertising and marketing corporations working in Florida.

Because the final statutory adjustments in July 2021, the FTSA has severely impacted telemarketing and textual content advertising and marketing companies advertising and marketing to Florida residents and in any other case conducting enterprise within the state. Just like the federal Phone Client Safety Act (TCPA), the FTSA prohibits utilizing automated dialers to name or textual content customers with out their consent.

The Florida regulation additionally allows customers to recuperate $500 per name and gives for as much as $1,500 in treble damages for willful or figuring out violations, plus affordable legal professional’s charges and prices. Up to now, the FTSA has additionally had rather more lenient requirements for bringing a declare, leading to Florida being a hotbed of state-level litigation within the space.

The amendments will change all of that. They’re additionally retroactive, making use of to actions began on or after Might twenty fifth, but additionally to any pending putative class actions by which the category has not but been licensed.

The amendments most importantly slender the scope of what’s thought-about an “automated dialer” to solely dialing techniques that each choose and dial or play recorded messages. This redefinition brings the FTSA consistent with the TCPA autodialer customary.

Whereas the FTSA presently prohibits utilizing automated techniques for all gross sales calls, together with each solicited and unsolicited, the amendments make clear that the prohibition applies solely to unsolicited phone gross sales calls. The FTSA now doesn’t apply to calls made in response to an categorical request of the individual known as or to an individual with whom the phone solicitor has a previous or current enterprise relationship.

The amendments additionally develop the signature requirement for prior categorical written consent to incorporate affirmatively responding to receiving a textual content message or an e-mail solicitation or in any other case checking a field indicating consent.

Lastly, the amendments embody a secure harbor provision for texts, requiring that people looking for statutory damages on the idea of textual content messages to first reply to a textual content message affirmatively asking for future messages to cease, after which permitting the sender 15 days to really cease sending textual content messages. A client can then convey an FTSA declare provided that the sender continues to ship textual content messages after the 15-day secure harbor.

These new amendments remediate the FTSA’s most pernicious results on good religion advertising and marketing campaigns and, hopefully, will restrict the scope of future FTSA litigation to essentially the most egregious instances of abuse.

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