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The colorful facades of buildings and palm trees in Fort Myers, Florida

We recently hosted a webinar titled FTSA De-Fanged? Everything You Need to Know RIGHT NOW About the Amendments to Florida’s Dreaded Mini-TCPA. The webinar featured a panel of Eric J. Troutman, Partner at Troutman Amin, LLP; Jenniffer Cabrera, Associate at Troutman Amin, LLP; Aaron S. Weiss, Partner at Carlton Fields; and the host, Isaac Shloss, Chief Product Officer at Contact Center Compliance. To view the recording of the webinar, click here.

The panel discussed the Florida Telephone Solicitation Act (FTSA), its 2021 amendments that created a mini-Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), and the recently passed (but not yet signed into law) amendments that will reform the state’s regulations once again. The panel went through the law, literally looking at the actual text of the amendments, discussing all the most significant changes and their consequences.

Among the topics covered were the following:

  • The original context of the 2021 FTSA amendments following Facebook and how those amendments transformed Florida’s existing telemarketing regulations into an incredibly dangerous mini-TCPA
  • Speculation on how the 2021 amendments came to be written in such a way that were so unfriendly to business concerns
  • The onslaught of litigation that followed in the wake of the 2021 amendments
  • Parsing the significance of the changes to the language of the new amendments, with particular emphasis on the change in the autodialer definition from “selection or dialing” to “selection and dialing”
  • How the new amendments bring the state’s consent standards more in line with federal standards than they had been previously
  • How prerecorded call regulations relate to potentially prerecorded disclosures on otherwise live voice calls
  • How different provisions of the new amendments came to be in response to actual cases
  • Parsing disparities in the language of different parts of the bill
  • How exemptions apply to different parts of the law and why they are hard to apply
  • How the new amendments do and don’t align with federal regulations
  • The addition of the phrase “unsolicited” and why that opens up inquiry and established business relationship (EBR) defenses to autodialer claims
  • Why predictive dialers are still a risk but click-to-dial systems are safe
  • The 15-day notice-and-cure period for text message complaints and how it functions as a grace period and protection from text message litigation for marketers that honor opt-outs
  • How to best honor opt-outs
  • The retroactivity provision that should eliminate existing class actions once the bill is signed into law by the governor and how that may be viewed by the courts

Our panel really dug into the details of these amendments and their idiosyncrasies. For callers into Florida, it is worth reviewing the recording of these discussions.