The FCC announced that its new revocation rule will take effect on April 11, 2025.
With a goal “to strengthen consumers’ ability to revoke consent,” the Agency adopted the rule earlier this year (https://www.manatt.com/insights/newsletters/tcpa-connect/fcc-adopts-revocation-rules).
Pursuant to the Rule, callers and senders are prohibited from designating an exclusive means of revoking consent and consumers are entitled to revoke their consent through “any reasonable manner that clearly expresses a desire not to receive further calls or text messages.”
The FCC provided a standardized list of key words—including “stop,” “quit,” “revoke,” “opt out,” “cancel,” “unsubscribe” and “end”—that conclusively revoke consent and established per se reasonable methods of opt-out, including any revocation request made via an “automated, interactive voice or key press-activated opt-out mechanism.”
Where a consumer uses a revocation method other than a means specified in the order, this “creates a rebuttable presumption that the consumer has revoked consent” absent evidence to the contrary.
If a texting protocol does not allow reply messages, the sender must provide a clear and conspicuous disclosure in each text to the consumer that two-way texting is not available due to technical limitations and clearly and conspicuously provide reasonable alternative ways for a consumer to revoke consent.
The agency also shortened the time frame for honoring DNC and consent revocation requests, which must not exceed ten business days after receipt of the request, and broadened the scope of revocation, clarifying that revocation of consent from a particular type of robocall or robotext constitutes revocation of consent for all robocalls and robotexts from the caller or sender.
One part of the rule that has already gone into effect is that a confirmatory opt-out text that only confirms the revocation request and does not include additional marketing or promotional information is allowed, as long as it is sent within five minutes of receiving the opt-out request.
Within the confirmation message, a sender may also request clarification from a consumer, wherein a text recipient has consented to several categories of text messages, to understand which categories of communications the consumer is revoking consent to receive. If a consumer does not respond to the confirmation text, the FCC said it should be treated as a revocation of consent for all robocalls and robotexts from the sender.
To read the FCC’s announcement, click here.
Why it matters: Companies, including those making B2B outreach, should prepare themselves for compliance with the new revocation rule, set to take effect in April 2025. The new revocation rule’s changes to the scope of a revocation request, along with the required ten-day maximum timeline to honor a do-not-call or revocation request, may mean that existing business practices will now violate TCPA regulations.