FCC Revamps Rules on Consent to Calls and Texts Under the TCPA

On October 1, 2026, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) released an order that offers meaningful compliance relief for companies making calls and sending texts subject to the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), along with a further notice proposing additional reforms. This Client Alert summarizes the background of the FCC’s consent-revocation rules, the key changes in the new order and proposals, and practical next steps for callers and texters.

Granting and Revoking Consent Under the TCPA

The TCPA and the FCC’s implementing rules prohibit various types of calls when made without consent, including calls to mobile telephone lines using an automatic telephone dialing system or an artificial or prerecorded voice, telemarketing calls to residential telephone lines using an artificial or prerecorded voice, and telemarketing calls to numbers appearing on the National Do Not Call Registry. Violations of the TCPA carry damages of $500 per call (tripled if knowing or willful) and can result in substantial liability — a risk magnified by the threat of class-action lawsuits alleging widespread violations by callers and texters. Since the TCPA’s passage, the FCC has adopted a series of orders interpreting the TCPA, including rulings aimed at shielding consumers from unconsented contact while preserving efficient methods for companies to reach their customers.

In recent years, both courts and the FCC have struggled to strike the right balance for consumers seeking to revoke their initial consent to receive communications and callers processing those revocations. In 2015, the FCC ruled that consumers could revoke consent under the TCPA by “any reasonable means.” While this interpretation withstood judicial challenges, the contours of the “reasonable means” test and the power of callers to designate an exclusive revocation method remained uncertain. This uncertainty made compliance especially difficult for businesses, which had to monitor a wide and shifting array of potential revocation channels — from calls and texts to emails, voicemails, and in-person communications — with little clear guidance on which revocation methods a court or the FCC might later deem “reasonable.”

Under the Biden administration, the FCC weighed in on these issues again, concluding in a 2024 order that a consumer’s revocation of consent for one form of informational robocall served to revoke consent for all calls and texts from a caller. This order also listed several “reasonable” methods for revoking consent but stopped short of clarifying whether callers could contract with consumers for a single, exclusive revocation method. Since the change in administrations, the FCC delayed the effective date of this order multiple times as it contemplated further reform.

The FCC’s New Rules and Proposals for Further Clarifications

The new order released by the FCC last week revisits these questions and establishes several key rules to govern consent and revocation issues going forward:

• Scope of consent revocation: Callers may now interpret consumer revocation requests as applying only to the specific category of informational robocalls that prompted the revocation, thus ending the “revoke all” approach that was adopted in 2024. However, consumer revocation of consent to advertising and telemarketing messages still operates to revoke consent to all such messages, including calls and texts from affiliated entities.
• Exclusive means of revoking consent: Callers may now designate an exclusive means of consent revocation, but they must use one of three methods: (1) automated voice or keypress protocols, (2) the use of specified words in response to a text, or (3) the use of a website or telephone number for processing opt-out requests. Meanwhile, existing rules that require specific opt-out methods for certain types of calls remain unchanged.
• Financial institutions’ use of customer telephone numbers: In view of financial institutions’ role in alerting their customers to fraud, the FCC will now permit these institutions to reach customers using phone numbers obtained from any “reliable source,” not just the number the customer provided.

This order will go into effect 30 days after its publication in the Federal Register, which has yet to occur at the time of writing.

In the same item, the FCC issued a further notice of proposed rulemaking that seeks public comment on four additional issues:

• Timeframe for processing consent revocation requests: Where current rules require revocation requests to be processed within 10 business days, the FCC seeks to understand the effect of shortening that window to seven business days and whether consumer confusion could arise if this shorter window were imposed only on callers that employ an exclusive revocation method.
• Two-way texting: The notice also proposes a requirement that text senders use a “two-way” protocol enabling consumers to respond directly via text message. The FCC seeks comment on the effect of such a rule on informational and advertising messages, whether differential treatment of the two message types would be preferable, and what compliance and communication burdens such a rule would create.
• “Revoke all” mechanisms: The FCC seeks comment on a proposed rule that would require callers wishing to construe revocation requests narrowly to offer a method of revoking consent for all messages, and whether the risk of accidental revocation and costs of compliance outweigh the benefits.
• Affiliated businesses: The notice also invites comment on the need for reform of the rules governing consent and revocation where a caller operates multiple affiliates or divisions.

Comments on these issues are due 30 days following publication in the Federal Register, and reply comments will be due 60 days after publication.

Next Steps for Callers and Texters

For companies making calls or sending texts subject to the TCPA, the order offers meaningful compliance relief, but leveraging that relief will require deliberate changes to opt-out practices and systems. In particular, callers should consider the following:

• Decide whether to designate an exclusive revocation method: Callers that designate one or more of the three permitted methods are no longer required to process revocation requests made by other means, which should reduce the litigation risk associated with the current “reasonable means” standard and its rebuttable presumption. To rely on this safe harbor, however, callers must clearly and conspicuously disclose the designated method in each call or text. Text senders may satisfy this requirement by disclosing a single standardized keyword (e.g., “stop”), but must still honor all seven of the FCC’s standardized words.
• Configure opt-out systems for category-specific revocations: Callers should consider defining their categories of informational messages (e.g., payment reminders, fraud alerts, or appointment reminders) and ensuring their systems can tie each opt-out to the category that prompted it, while continuing to treat any opt-out from a marketing message as applying to all marketing messages. Because the FCC is considering conditioning category-specific treatment on offering a “revoke all” option, callers may also wish to consider voluntarily offering one, which the FCC expressly permits.
• Financial institutions should revisit fraud-alert number sourcing: Financial institutions may now send exempt fraud and data security alerts to numbers supplied by an authorized family member on the account, captured when the customer calls the institution, or contained in records obtained from another financial institution. The exemption’s other conditions still apply, including the limit of three messages per event over a three-day period and the obligation to honor opt-outs immediately, and the FCC encourages use of the Reassigned Numbers Database to avoid reaching prior holders of a number.
• Consider engaging in the further rulemaking: The proposals in the further notice could reshape the relief granted in the order, including a shorter seven-business-day processing window, a mandate for two-way texting, a “revoke all” condition, and new rules for affiliates and divisions. Businesses should assess the potential benefits and burdens of these proposals now and consider whether they wish to participate in the public comment process.