20-03-2025
Utah Attorney General Derek Brown joins the bipartisan fight against robocalls
Utah Attorney General Derek Brown has officially joined 27 other state attorneys general in the fight against robocalls.
The AGs are supporting a rehearing by the National Consumer Law Center in a case between the Insurance Marketing Coalition Limited and the Federal Communications Commission. The AGs seek to defend a rule by the FCC that stops telemarketers from obtaining and selling consumers' phone numbers to robocallers without their consent.
The brief hopes to 'shut the spigot of illegal robocalls' by giving the FCC authority to issue and enforce the one-to-one consent rule, which was defined in the Telephone Consumer Protection Act in 1991.
Former Sen. Ernest Hollings, D-S.C., who sponsored the bill in the '90s, famously described robocalls as 'the scourge of modern society.'
'They wake us up in the morning; they interrupt our dinner at night; they force the sick and elderly out of bed; they hound us until we want to rip the telephone right out of the wall,' he said.
But these robocallers are not merely annoying; they cost American consumers over $1.2 billion in 2023 alone, according to the Federal Trade Commission.
In a statement to the Deseret News, Brown said robocalls 'target the most vulnerable members of our society.' He added, 'This FCC policy would cut off robocalls at the source. It is critical that we protect Utahns from scams that can lead to them losing millions of dollars.'
The core legal change the AG brief supports is to uphold the FCC's one-to-one consent rule.
This rule, according to an FCC consumer guide, 'prohibits lead generators, texters, and callers from using a single consumer written consent to inundate consumers with unwanted telemarketing robocalls and robotexts from dozens of sellers when consumers visit comparison shopping websites.'
Currently, however, the one-to-one consent rule is not fully followed because a panel of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals issued a decision invalidating it.
The brief explains, 'The panel's decision invalidating this commonsense rule threatens Amici States' interest in protecting consumers, families, and businesses from the deluge of invasive robocalls,' asserting that the one-to-one consent rule must be followed for the AGs to protect American citizens.
'Americans passionately disagree about many things. But they are largely united in their disdain for robocalls,' Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh said in a 2020 appeal.
The fight against robocalls in the U.S. is overwhelmingly bipartisan and largely against data collectors and harvesters.
