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TCPA suits are up big in 2026 but the number of ATDS (Autodialer) lawsuits being filed this year are near an all time low.
There’s a reason.
Courts across the country have taken a narrow read of the TCPA’s ATDS rules following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Facebook. Whether these cases are technically applying the Supreme Court’s ruling properly or not– a live question– the fact remains that very few TCPA ATDS suits get off the ground these days.
Take the case of Ksiazkiewicz v. Woods Basement Systems, Inc. 2026 WL 2224639 (E.D. Mo. Aug. 3, 2026). There the Plaintiff alleged Woods Basement used an autodialer to call and text her dozens of times after she requested a quote and continued sending messages even after she requested the messages stop.
Plaintiff sued under the TCPA for violations of section 227(b)–the autodialer provisions– and for failure to abide the DNC request. Defendant moved to dismiss both claims and the court dismissed the suit as to the ATDS provisions but not as to the DNC violations.
On the ATDS claims the Plaintiff had alleged: i) repeat marketing calls; ii) rotating or spoofed caller ID numbers; iii) click-and-pause delays before live agents
connected; iv) and repeated identical messages. But the court held “that is not enough to state a claim for Autodial violations under the TCPA… Ksiazkiewicz must allege facts that show Woods used a system that generates the phone numbers that are dialed, not just a system that automatically dials phone numbers it already has.”
Again, it is unclear whether that is a correct articulation of the law– the Supreme Court left open other options– but it is a correct articulation of the majority position.
What stands out here is most courts will allow a claim like this one to survive the pleadings stage even with the law heavily against the ATDS claim– this court saw straight through the allegations and took the Plaintiff’s admission the number had been obtained from her directly as the end of the issue.
Meanwhile the Court denied the motion to dismiss the internal DNC claim because Plaintiff had requested texts to stop and they continued. The court apparently inferred from that fact th defendant lacked an internal DNC policy– the reasoning here was a little unclear. What is clear, however, is the court permitted the internal DNC claim (arising under 227(c)) to SMS messages on short analysis– so it appears this court should be counted among the “texts are calls” court, but the analysis is so thin that it doesn’t really move the needle in my mind.
Will keep an eye on this.
And you should keep an eye on the NEW Deserve to Win podcast format. Have you checked this thing out? Episode 44 is out now with the guys behind Sonera. Check it out:
Chat soon!
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