On August 4, 2016, the FCC issued a declaratory ruling in response to petitions from Blackboard, Inc., as well as a joint petition by Edison Electric Institute and the American Gas Association.  Both petitions sought clarifications on the already existing "emergency purposes" exemption in the TCPA.  

The FCC's order clarifies that schools may lawfully make robocalls and send texts to student family wireless phones pursuant to an “emergency purpose” exception or with prior express consent without violating the TCPA.  They also clarified that utilities may make robocalls and send texts to customers about matters closely related to the utility service, such as a service outage or warning about potential service interruptions due to severe weather conditions, because their customers provided consent to receive these calls and texts when they gave their phone numbers to the utility company.