Revitch was a long-time DIRECTV subscriber. In 2011, when Revitch upgraded his mobile phone, he signed a new contract with AT&T Mobility which contained an arbitration clause requiring arbitration of any disputes arising out of or related to his relationship with AT&T or its affiliates. In 2015 AT&T acquired DIRECTV. In 2018, Revitch sued DIRECTV for violating the TCPA by sending prerecorded messages to his cell phone. This split panel decision holds that DIRECTV cannot enforce the AT&T arbitration agreement against Revitch. The lead opinion applies California law requiring construction of contracts in accordance with their plain language except where doing so leads to absurd results (Civ. Code 1638) to hold that it would be absurd to construe the AT&T arbitration clause to cover disputes with whatever companies AT&T might acquire years or decades after the contract was entered into. On that basis, it holds that the parties did not agree to arbitrate disputes involving future affiliates. A concurrence would hold that arbitration was not required because the TCPA dispute did not “arise out of” the contract or transaction containing the arbitration clause, as required for FAA section 2 to apply. The dissent follows Mey v. DIRECTV, LLC (4th Cir. 2020) __ F.3d __, 2020 WL 4660194, which compelled arbitration under the same clause and circumstances. It argued that Revitch didn’t dispute that he entered into an arbitration agreement with AT&T so the only issue was whether this dispute fell within the scope of that agreement, and the dissent would hold it did because the use of the unmodified word “affiliate” includes future or past affiliates as well as present ones.