TAKE NOTE: Court Holds A “Stop” Request To A Text Message May Revoke Consent For Both Calls And Texts In TCPA Class Action Ruling

If a consumer responds “Stop” to a text message does that mean you have to stop calling the consumer as well? According to one federal judge in Florida the answer may be “yes.”

In Zagury v. Puragin Water, 2026 WL 2299332 (S.D. Fl. Aug. 11, 2026) the plaintiff alleged she revoked her consent to be contacted when she replied “stop” to an SMS message.

While the defendant appeared to concede the stop was sufficient revocation of SMS message consent it moved to dismiss the complaint as to calls placed after the SMS stop request. In the defendant’s view calls can continue even after a stop request because the stop should apply only to the SMS channel.

The Court disagreed.

Citing the FCC’s recent handiwork on TCPA revocation the court found stop response is enough to require a business to stop calling in addition to SMS unless the consumer responds to a one time text confirmation clarifying the scope of the revocation is limited to SMS.

The only problem is the Court cited a portion of the FCC’s rule– the so-called nuclear revocation rule– that is not yet in effect (and hopefully never goes into effect.)

The Court noted that certain portions of the FCC’s revocation rule have been delayed but, for some reason, concluded this portion of the rule was not (it was.)

More importantly, perhaps, the Court also cited the older 2015 “any reasonable means” rule to hold a fact finder must look at the totality of the circumstances to assess the validity of a revocation– which must be done at a later part of the case. This is probably correct although none of these FCC rulings are binding any more after Loper Bright and McLaughlin.

So where does this leave us?

Without question some courts will hold a stop request will apply across channels. Whether that conclusion is well founded is sort of irrelevant– if you want to avoid suits you may want to be conservative here.

Additionally in the context of marketing messages some courts have held a “stop” request is sufficient to constitute a DNC request and require a business to list the consumer’s number on their internal DNC list. So its definitely a good idea for all marketing calls to stop if a consumer opts out of SMS.

We’ll keep an eye on all of this.

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