Trump-Appointed Judge Destroys Personal Immunity For Seemingly Official Acts In TCPA Suit — There Seems To Be More Here Than Meets The Eye
By Tori Guidry
NO IMMUNITY
NO IMMUNITY FOR GOVERNMENT ROBOCALLS
Trump-Appointed Judge Destroys Personal Immunity For Seemingly Official Acts In TCPA Suit — There Seems To Be More Here Than Meets The Eye
By Tori Guidry
HOLY smokes , this is a massive ruling .
A federal court in Pennsylvania just held individual legislators can be personally liable under the TCPA for calls they make in connection with their official government functions — for instance , drawing attention to an annual event where they could learn about services from nonprofits and other government service providers .
The result here is stunning and could have shades of impact for “ official ” conduct by lawmakers and executive branch officials coast to coast . Then again , this could just be a simple case of bad lawyering and the suit may end up having very limited impact .
But let ’ s break this down , because there are a lot of interesting pieces here .
First , the ruling in Perrong v . Mathew Bradford , 2:23-cv-00510-JDW ( Doc .
54 )( E . D . Pa . May 13 , 2024 ) was brought to you by repeat-litigatorturned-attorney Andrew Perrong .
Perrong was recently thrashed at the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in a suit in which he tried to expand the TCPA ’ s autodialer definition , and he seemed to be barking up the wrong tree in his suit against Bradford as well . The Court had already dismissed several counts of Perrong ’ s claim against Bradford — including the autodialer claim — but the claim related to prerecorded calls remained .
At issue is this : Can a sitting lawmaker be sued individually when his or her office sends prerecorded robocalls as part of official government communications to constituents ?
The communications are paid for by the political parties — perhaps this was the problem — but are approved by the House Communications Office which reviews the request with House Legal and Ethics to make sure that the underlying event has “ a clear legislative purpose and public benefit .”
As the opinion explains it :
Once the event is vetted , a staffer in the House Communications Office drafts a script describing the event , provides it to the legislator ’ s office , and coordinates with the legislator ’ s office as to the specifics of the call . The legislator records the audio for the call and uploads it to a website . The House Communications Office provides the audio to Cleo to make the actual calls .
Perrong sued arguing that Bradford was responsible for the calls . Bradford — as well as the Democratic and Republican caucuses who also got involved in the suit and submitted briefs in support of Bradford — argued that because Bradford ’ s office complied with the House rule
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