Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul joined a coalition of 33 attorneys general this week in filing a brief with the U.S. Supreme Court arguing for the preservation of the anti-robocall provisions of the federal Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA).
Enacted in 1991, The TCPA is a piece of federal consumer-protection law that allows individuals to sue illegal robocallers or, states to sue on their residents’ behalf.
A decision in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit recently invalidated a portion of the act, potentially jeopardizing the entire federal robocall ban.
In the brief, Raoul and the coalition assert that if the recent exemption for federal government debt collection is held to be unconstitutional, the TCPA’s severability clause should remove that exemption from the remaining robocall ban rather than invalidate the ban entirely. The coalition maintains that the robocall ban is critical in safeguarding personal and residential privacy by prohibiting intrusive robocalls.
Raoul says that complaints related to robocalls continue to be among the most common consumer complaints received by his office.
According to the Attorney General, in January of this year alone, Americans received more than 4.7 billion robocalls.
Consumers who wish to file a consumer complaint concerning robocalls they have received can do so on the Attorney General’s website at https://illinoisattorneygeneral.gov/ or by calling the Consumer Fraud Hotline at 1-800-243-0618.
Information about how consumers can add their number to the Do Not Call registry is also available on the Attorney General’s website.