In Moriarity v. Nationstar Mortg., LLC, 2013 WL 3354448 (E.D.Cal. 2013), Magistrate Judge Snyder followed the FCC regulations and found debt collection calls to land-lines exempt from the TCPA.
Plaintiff’s second claimed violation of the TCPA is of 47 U.S.C. § 227(b)(1)(B). This section makes it unlawful for a person as described above “to initiate any telephone call to any residential telephone line using an artificial or prerecorded voice to deliver a message without the prior express consent of the called party.” Although Plaintiff has alleged these facts, this section also allows the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) to create exemptions, and it has done so. As relevant here, FCC regulations exempt any call “made for a commercial purpose but [which] does not include or introduce an unsolicited advertisement or constitute a telephone solicitation[. ]” 47 C.F.R. § 64.1200(a)(2)(iii). In 1995, the FCC issued a Memorandum Opinion and Order clarifying that this exemption covered pre-recorded debt collection calls. The FCC explained: “[P]rerecorded debt collection calls are adequately covered by exemptions adopted in our rules. Our rules explicitly exempt calls made either by a party with whom the subscriber has an established busi-ness relationship or calls that do not transmit an unsolicited advertisement and are made for a commercial purpose…. We have specifically noted that ‘prerecorded debt collection calls [are] exempt from the prohibitions on [prerecorded] calls to res-idences as … commercial calls … which do not transmit an unsolicited advertisement.’ … Because the termination of an established business relation-ship is significant only in the context of solicitation calls, that act of terminating such a relationship would not hinder or thwart creditors’ attempts to reach debtors by telephone. Thus, FCC regulations exempt from 47 U.S.C. § 227(b)(1)(B) the calls allegedly made by Nationstar.