FCC Confirms Fax to Email Subject to TCPA, Releases Additional Fax Rulings
On August 28, 2015, the Federal Communications Commission, through its Consumer & Governmental Affairs Bureau, issued three separate rulings on petitions relating to its fax rules under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act.
In a declaratory ruling, CGAB clarified that:
- faxes sent and received over telephone lines are subject to TCPA regulation even if those faxes are “converted to and delivered to a consumer as an electronic mail attachment.”
- “the consumer to whom the content of a fax or efax is directed,” and not the company hosting the fax servers that receive the faxes over a telephone line and re-send the faxes to the subscriber of the service, is the recipient of the fax under the TCPA.
- the act of sending a previously-faxed document by email is not subject to TCPA regulation.
CGAB also declined to provide “safe harbor” fax opt-out language, noting that the TCPA rules and orders already set forth the required content for opt-out notices. Finally, CGAB declined to issue a blanket rule as to whether “third parties, including fax broadcasters, who are retained to accept opt-out requests” are subject to TCPA liability, and instead noted that the question of whether a third party has sufficient involvement in the sending of faxes to create liability is an individualized inquiry.