TCPA Claims in 2026: The Complete Guide to Suing Over Robocalls, Spam Texts, and Illegal Telemarketing

If your phone rings with a recorded sales pitch, lights up with texts you never agreed to receive, or keeps ringing after you said stop, federal law may entitle you to real money for every single call. The Telephone Consumer Protection Act, 47 U.S.C. § 227, is one of the few statutes in American law with a built-in bounty: $500 per violation, and up to $1,500 per violation when the caller knew better. Florida adds its own layer, the Florida Telephone Solicitation Act, Fla. Stat. § 501.059, which is in some respects broader than the federal law. This guide explains how TCPA claims work in 2026: what is illegal, what each call or text is worth, how consent and revocation actually function, how long you have to sue, and how to build the kind of record that wins these cases. It is general information, not legal advice, and no outcome is promised or guaranteed.

Quick Answer

The TCPA lets you sue for $500 per illegal robocall, autodialed call, prerecorded message, spam text, or junk fax, trebled to $1,500 per violation if the conduct was willful or knowing. Calls to numbers on the National Do Not Call Registry carry their own $500 to $1,500 damages under § 227(c). No autodialer proof is needed for Do Not Call claims or for prerecorded-voice telemarketing. Florida's FTSA, § 501.059, covers telephonic sales calls made with an automated system for the selection or dialing of numbers and allows $500 per call, and it applies even to some calls the federal TCPA no longer reaches. You can revoke consent at any time by any reasonable means, including replying STOP. The statute of limitations is four years under 28 U.S.C. § 1658. Document every call with screenshots, call logs, and recordings where lawful.

What the TCPA Is and Why It Exists

Congress passed the Telephone Consumer Protection Act in 1991 after finding that automated telemarketing was an invasion of privacy that ordinary people had no practical way to fight. Rather than rely only on government enforcement, Congress gave individuals a private right of action: any person who receives a prohibited call can sue in state or federal court for statutory damages. That design, a per-call bounty with no need to prove financial loss, is what makes the TCPA the most-used consumer statute in the country. Tens of thousands of TCPA cases have been filed since, from individual small-claims actions to class actions against national brands.

Three features define the statute. First, statutory damages: you do not have to show lost money, emotional harm, or any other injury beyond receiving the call, though standing doctrine after TransUnion LLC v. Ramirez requires plaintiffs in federal court to tie the claim to a concrete harm such as intrusion and wasted time, which courts in the Eleventh Circuit generally recognize. Second, per-violation counting: each call, each text, and each fax is a separate violation, so a campaign of forty texts is forty violations. Third, willfulness trebling: under § 227(b)(3), a court may award up to three times the statutory amount, $1,500 per violation, when the violation was willful or knowing, such as calls that continue after a revocation or a demand letter.

The Five Core TCPA Violations

Most TCPA claims fall into one of five buckets, and each has different elements.

Two practical consequences flow from that table. First, the Do Not Call track never requires proof of dialing technology, which makes it the workhorse claim against live-agent telemarketers. Second, prerecorded-voice claims are technology-agnostic: if you hear a recorded or artificial voice pitch, the technology question largely disappears, and the fight is about consent.

The Autodialer Definition After Facebook v. Duguid

The biggest development in modern TCPA law is the Supreme Court's 2021 decision in Facebook, Inc. v. Duguid, which held that an automatic telephone dialing system under § 227(a)(1) must have the capacity either to store or produce telephone numbers using a random or sequential number generator. Dialing from a curated list of customer numbers, the Court said, is not ATDS use under the federal statute unless the list itself was generated randomly or sequentially.

That decision narrowed the federal autodialer track significantly, and in 2026 it shapes case selection. Plaintiffs' counsel now plead around Duguid in three ways. They focus on prerecorded and artificial-voice claims, which need no ATDS. They lean on Do Not Call claims against live telemarketers. And they plead state mini-TCPAs, most importantly Florida's FTSA, which defines prohibited equipment as an automated system for the selection or dialing of telephone numbers, with no random-or-sequential requirement. The Eleventh Circuit's case law has treated list-based dialing as outside the federal ATDS definition, which is exactly why the FTSA matters so much for Florida consumers: conduct that escapes the federal statute can still violate Florida law.

One more 2026 reality: the FCC has confirmed that AI-generated voices are artificial voices under the TCPA. Its 2024 declaratory ruling made clear that voice-cloned and synthetic telemarketing calls fall within § 227(b)(1)(B), so the rise of AI sales callers has expanded, not shrunk, the prerecorded-voice track.

Florida's Telephone Solicitation Act: The State Layer

Fla. Stat. § 501.059 makes it unlawful to make or knowingly allow a telephonic sales call using an automated system for the selection or dialing of telephone numbers, or the playing of a recorded message, without the prior express written consent of the called party. Damages are $500 per call, with discretionary trebling for willful violations, and the statute creates a private right of action in Florida courts.

The FTSA has features Florida consumers should know. Its definition of covered equipment is broader than the post-Duguid federal definition, because selection or dialing by an automated system can include list-based platforms. It covers texts as well as calls, because courts have read telephonic sales call to include text messages. It requires prior express written consent with specific disclosures, including that consent is not a condition of purchase. And it was amended in 2023 to require that a called party who texts STOP must stop receiving messages within 15 days, with a safe harbor for messages sent within that window.

Florida also regulates telemarketing hours and caller identification. Under the statute and its implementing rules, sales calls may not be placed before 8 a.m. or after 8 p.m. in the called party's time zone, and callers may not block or spoof caller ID. Each of these restrictions generates its own litigation theories when violated.

Consent: How It Is Given, and How You Take It Back

Consent is the central defense in almost every TCPA case, so understanding it is understanding the case. There are two tiers. Prior express consent, which can be oral or implied from providing your number for a transactional purpose, is enough for non-telemarketing autodialed calls such as appointment reminders. Prior express written consent, defined at 47 C.F.R. § 64.1200(f)(9), is required for telemarketing robocalls and texts: a signed agreement, electronic or otherwise, that clearly authorizes the calls, identifies the seller, states the phone number, and discloses that consent is not a condition of buying anything.

Revocation is equally important. The FCC's 2015 order and its 2024 consent order establish that a consumer who gave consent may revoke it at any time and by any reasonable means: replying STOP, saying stop on a call, writing an email, or using the company's own opt-out mechanism. Companies may not design revocation processes that obstruct opting out. Under the 2024 order, revocation applies within a reasonable time not exceeding ten business days, applies to both robocalls and robotexts, and revocation of consent for one type of message revokes it for all robocalls and texts from that caller to that number unless the consumer specifies otherwise. One clarification text in response to a STOP, asking about scope, is permitted; more than one is not.

Practically, this creates the strongest TCPA pattern there is: consent given, consent revoked, calls continue. Every post-revocation call is a knowing violation and prime trebling material.

What Each Call Is Worth

The arithmetic is the reason these cases are worth pursuing. Federal statutory damages are $500 per violation under § 227(b)(3) and § 227(c)(5), trebled at the court's discretion to $1,500 for willful or knowing violations. Florida FTSA damages are $500 per call with discretionary trebling. The claims can be stacked where both statutes apply. A common real-world scenario: a consumer revokes consent, then receives 25 more marketing texts over three months. That is 25 federal violations, 25 potential FTSA violations, and a willfulness argument on every one of them. Even without trebling, the exposure is $25,000 before fees, which is why well-documented individual TCPA cases routinely resolve for four and five figures.

There is also a fee-adjacent wrinkle worth knowing: the TCPA itself does not contain a fee-shifting provision, which is why many individual cases are handled on contingency and why settlement leverage comes from the statutory damage math rather than fee exposure.

How to Document Calls So a Claim Holds Up

TCPA cases are won on the consumer's own records. The evidence checklist is short and entirely within your control.

1. Screenshot every spam text in full, showing the sender number and the timestamp.
2. For calls, screenshot your call log immediately so the number, date, time, and duration are preserved.
3. When you revoke, do it in writing: reply STOP and screenshot the exchange, or send an email and keep it.
4. Keep voicemails. A prerecorded voicemail is direct proof of the voice element.
5. If you are on the Do Not Call Registry, keep your registration confirmation; registration is free at donotcall.gov and permanent.
6. Note what you said on any live call, especially the words stop calling me, and the agent's response.
7. Do not delete anything. Spoliation arguments can damage an otherwise strong case.

One caution on recording: Florida is an all-party consent state under Fla. Stat. § 934.03, meaning recording a live call without the other party's consent can itself be a crime. Screenshots of logs and texts carry no such risk and are usually all the proof needed.

Deadlines, Courts, and Where These Cases Are Filed

The TCPA borrows the federal catch-all limitations period: four years under 28 U.S.C. § 1658, measured from each call. The FTSA likewise carries a four-year period under Fla. Stat. § 95.11. TCPA claims may be brought in state court, including Miami-Dade County courts, or in federal court in the Southern District of Florida; the statute's grant of jurisdiction to state courts does not preclude federal jurisdiction, and defendants frequently remove.

Class actions remain a major part of TCPA practice, but individual cases have become increasingly attractive because the per-violation math produces meaningful value without class certification fights over ascertainability and consent. Arbitration clauses and class waivers in the underlying contract are the biggest procedural obstacle and have to be evaluated case by case; a consumer who never had a contract with the caller, which is common with lead-generator robocalls, usually has no arbitration problem at all.

The Lead Generator Problem: Who Do You Sue?

Most modern robocalls come from marketing chains: a lead generator collects or fabricates a consent, sells the lead to an aggregator, who sells it to the company whose product is pitched. The FCC's 2023 one-to-one consent order targeted exactly this model, requiring that written consent name a single seller and be logically and topically related to the site where consent was given. Although the Eleventh Circuit vacated the one-to-one rule in early 2025 on procedural grounds in Insurance Marketing Coalition v. FCC, the underlying principle survives through ordinary consent doctrine: a consent form that never mentioned the caller is not consent from that caller. Seller liability for the acts of telemarketers also runs through vicarious liability principles recognized in the FCC's 2013 Dish Network ruling and applied under ordinary agency law, so the brand on the pitch is frequently a proper defendant alongside the dialer.

Defenses You Should Expect

The recurring defenses are consent, revocation timing, technology (post-Duguid, the platform was not an ATDS), wrong number or recycled number (the prior subscriber consented), and standing in federal court. Each has a standard answer. Consent is defeated by the written-consent requirements and by documented revocation. Technology arguments do not reach prerecorded-voice, Do Not Call, or FTSA claims. Recycled-number defenses are evaluated under the FCC's reasonable-reliance framework and often fail once a consumer tells the caller the number changed hands. The strongest protection against all of them is the documentation habits listed above.

Official Sources

• Telephone Consumer Protection Act, 47 U.S.C. § 227
• FCC TCPA rules, 47 C.F.R. § 64.1200
• Facebook, Inc. v. Duguid, 592 U.S. 395 (2021)
• Florida Telephone Solicitation Act, Fla. Stat. § 501.059
• National Do Not Call Registry
• FCC consumer guide to robocalls
• 28 U.S.C. § 1658 (four-year catch-all limitations period)
• FCC Declaratory Ruling on AI-generated voices (February 2024)
• FCC consent revocation order, effective April 2025
• FTC report unwanted calls and texts
• FCC consumer complaint center
• Fla. Stat. § 934.03 (Florida all-party consent recording law)
• TransUnion LLC v. Ramirez, 594 U.S. 413 (2021)

The Farber Law Firm: TCPA and Consumer Protection in Miami

The Farber Law Firm represents Florida consumers in TCPA and Florida Telephone Solicitation Act cases, from individual robocall and spam-text claims to cases against repeat telemarketers and the companies behind them. If you are receiving calls or texts you did not agree to, or calls that continued after you said stop, start a confidential case review through our TCPA intake page at thefarberlawfirm.com/tcpa-intake, call 305-774-0134, or visit 2199 Ponce de Leon Blvd #301, Coral Gables, FL 33134. Consultations are free, and most consumer protection matters are handled without upfront attorney fees; any fee arrangement is set out in a written retainer. Every case depends on its own facts, and prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome.