SUSAN ALLAN; JESSICA WILSON v. PENNSYLVANIA HIGHER EDUCATION ASSISTANCE AGENCY, dba American Education Services - Articles

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SUSAN ALLAN; JESSICA WILSON v. PENNSYLVANIA HIGHER EDUCATION ASSISTANCE AGENCY, dba American Education Services

Posted by: Tanja Trezise on Jul 29, 2020

Head Comment: NALBANDIAN delivered a separate dissenting opinion

Court: 6th Circuit Court (Published Opinions)

Attorneys 1: ARGUED: Sandra Jasinski, BODMAN PLC, Detroit, Michigan, for Appellant. Adam T. Hill, THE LAW OFFICES OF JEFFREY LOHMAN, P.C., Corona, California, for Appellees.

Attorneys 2: ON BRIEF: Sandra Jasinski, Marc M. Bakst, Donovan S. Asmar, BODMAN PLC, Detroit, Michigan, for Appellant. Adam T. Hill, THE LAW OFFICES OF JEFFREY LOHMAN, P.C., Corona, California, for Appellees.

Attorneys 3: Tara Twomey, NATIONAL CONSUMER LAW CENTER, Boston, Massachusetts, for Amici Curiae.

Judge(s): SILER, MOORE, and NALBANDIAN, Circuit Judges

Court Appealed: United States District Court for the Western District of Michigan at Marquette

KAREN NELSON MOORE, Circuit Judge. Jessica Wilson and Susan Allan (collectively, “Plaintiffs”) received unwanted calls to their cell phones from Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency (“PHEAA”) regarding their student-loan debt. They claim that those calls violated the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, 47 U.S.C. § 227 et seq. (“TCPA”). The TCPA contains an autodialer ban, which generally makes it a finable offense to use an automatic telephone dialing system (“ATDS”) to make unconsented-to calls or texts. The question in this case is whether, as a matter of statutory interpretation, the Avaya autodialer system that PHEAA uses to make collection-related calls qualifies as an ATDS.

Although it is clear from the text of the autodialer definition under § 227(a) that a device that generates and dials random or sequential numbers qualifies as an ATDS, it is not clear whether a device like the Avaya system—that dials from a stored list of numbers only—qualifies as an ATDS. Fortunately, related provisions clear up any ambiguity. We hold that the plain text of § 227, read in its entirety, makes clear that devices that dial from a stored list of numbers are subject to the autodialer ban. We accordingly AFFIRM the district court’s grant of summary judgment for Plaintiffs.

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