Month: October 2026

Florida’s Proposed Anti-Spam Act Could Reshape SMS Marketing in a Key Growth State

Florida is one of the largest consumer markets in the U.S. and, for anyone running SMS or outbound programs, one of the most legally complicated. That complexity may be about to grow. On September 17, 2026, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier proposed the Florida Anti-Spam Communications Act, a crackdown on scam calls and texts that would also change how legitimate marketers handle consent and opt-outs in the state.

For growth leaders, the proposal is a signal to revisit SMS strategy before the bill text arrives, not after.

The proposal at a glance

Announced in Pembroke Pines and covered by Spectrum News, WCTV and TCPAWorld, the proposal centers on fraud: impersonation of government agencies, spoofed caller ID, fake warrants sent by text and undisclosed AI voices used to obtain money. High-volume or high-loss schemes would become heightened felonies with mandatory prison time, and possessing or importing phone farms or SIM farms would itself be a felony.

The parts that touch marketers more directly:

  • Florida’s telemarketing consent law would be tightened.
  • STOP requests would have to be honored “within days instead of weeks.”
  • Carriers would have to authenticate caller ID, respond to traceback requests and stop carrying a named unlawful campaign after written notice.
  • Selling stolen lists used to target Florida numbers would be a separate civil violation.
  • The Department of Legal Affairs would gain independent authority to investigate and to seek injunctions, restitution and civil penalties.

According to Spectrum News, Uthmeier said his statewide prosecution team recovered “about $10 million for victims” over the past year. He also said he expects an AI legislative package “this year.” No bill number, sponsor or session timeline had been published as of late September.

The growth implications

Opt-out speed becomes a deliverability issue. Today, Florida’s FTSA ties a text-message damages claim to a consumer replying STOP and the sender texting again more than 15 days later, according to TCPAWorld’s analysis of Fla. Stat. 501.059(10)(c). The federal TCPA standard is a reasonable time, not exceeding ten business days. If Florida moves to “days,” every connected tool, from your ESP and SMS platform to your CRM, your dialer and any agency partners, has to share suppression data quickly.

Consent sources will get more scrutiny. A tighter consent law plus a civil violation for selling stolen lists puts pressure on third-party lead buying. Growth teams that rely on aggregators should be ready to show exactly where and how each Florida contact opted in.

Campaign continuity risk. Letting the state direct carriers to cut off a named campaign is aimed at scammers, but TCPAWorld notes that the response deadline and any process to challenge a mistaken notice are not yet known. For a brand running a big seasonal push, an erroneous cutoff could be costly.

Prep checklist for marketing teams

  • Map every system that can send a message to a Florida number and measure STOP-to-suppression time.
  • Document consent capture for each lead source, including screenshots, timestamps and language.
  • Keep sender IDs registered and authenticated with your carriers.
  • Assign someone to track the bill when it is filed.

Protect your pipeline from serial plaintiffs

Stricter state rules tend to give plaintiffs new theories, and Florida’s FTSA already carries a private right of action. Smart list hygiene is a growth lever as well as a legal one. TCPALitigatorList.com helps marketing and sales teams screen contacts against known TCPA litigators before launching a campaign, so a small number of high-risk contacts don’t turn a profitable channel into a legal expense.

The takeaway

Florida’s proposal is still early, and the final bill could look quite different. But the direction of travel is faster opt-outs, stricter consent and more state enforcement power. Growth teams that operationalize those principles now will keep their Florida channels open whatever the legislature passes.

Sources

Do-Not-Call Lawsuits Are Shrinking in Some Courts. Here’s How Growth Teams Should Read It.

For growth teams that live on outbound calls and SMS, the TCPA’s do-not-call rules have long been one of the most expensive line items on the risk register. Two federal court decisions handed down in the last week of September 2026 suggest that, in at least some courtrooms, that line item is shrinking. Whether it shrinks for your program depends on where your audience lives and how you run your campaigns.

The two rulings

Internicola v. MortgagePros, LLC (M.D. Fla., Sept. 24, 2026). A federal court in Florida held that the TCPA does not give consumers a private right of action for claims based on the National Do-Not-Call Registry. As reported by TCPAWorld, the court read the statute’s private-right provision, Section 227(c)(5), as covering only regulations the FCC prescribed within the nine-month window Congress set in 1991, which closed on September 20, 1992. The national registry did not exist until 2003. The court also held that texts are not “calls” under the provision.

Koeller v. Ox AppSec Security, Inc. (E.D. Mo., Sept. 30, 2026). A Missouri federal court dismissed DNC claims because, in its view, the TCPA’s do-not-call protections for “residential” subscribers do not reach cellphones. Citing Loper Bright and McLaughlin, the court refused to defer to the FCC’s 2003 interpretation that extended residential protection to cell numbers.

Why this matters for go-to-market

DNC claims are the bread and butter of a lot of TCPA filings because they are easy to plead: a number on the registry, two or more marketing contacts in twelve months, and a demand letter follows. If courts keep narrowing that pathway, the economics of plaintiff-side litigation change, and so does the risk profile of high-volume outbound.

But a GTM leader should read these cases the way they read a single A/B test: interesting, directional, not yet conclusive.

  • Geography is now a variable. TCPAWorld reported on October 5 that California federal courts are still treating SMS as calls for DNC purposes. A text program that is low-risk in one district may be high-risk in another.
  • The rulings are fragile. The Internicola plaintiff has filed a motion for reconsideration, and neither case is an appellate decision.
  • Other claims fill the gap. The cases did not touch Section 227(b) robocall and autodialer claims, and state laws such as Florida’s FTSA carry their own private rights of action.

How to adjust your playbook

Look closely at the Internicola facts. The consumer had engaged with the company about a refinance, then withdrew consent on July 1, 2025, and allegedly received just over a dozen calls and texts in the following ten days. That is not a DNC-registry problem at its core. It is a lifecycle problem: a lead who said stop kept getting touched by automated cadences.

For growth teams, that points to three practical moves:

  • Wire opt-outs directly into your sequencing tools. A stop request in one channel should pause every channel immediately.
  • Keep registry scrubbing in place. It is cheap insurance against jurisdictions that do not follow these rulings.
  • Segment by risk. Know which states and area codes your lists concentrate in, and match your cadence intensity to the legal environment.

Know your audience before you reach out

Every growth marketer knows that list quality drives results. In outbound, list quality also drives legal exposure. A small group of repeat plaintiffs generates an outsized share of TCPA lawsuits, and they are adept at shifting legal theories when courts close one door. TCPALitigatorList.com gives sales and marketing teams a way to screen lists against known TCPA litigators before a campaign launches, which removes some of the highest-risk contacts without slowing down the pipeline.

The takeaway

Late September brought real wins for businesses defending DNC claims, and they reflect a broader trend of courts reading the TCPA strictly after Loper Bright. Still, the smartest growth teams will bank the good news without changing their fundamentals: clean consent, fast opt-outs and smarter list hygiene remain the best growth hedge against litigation.

Sources

test test