ABA/Trades' Ex Parte Letter for Meeting with Commissioner Gomez's Office re: Revocation of Consent

Dear Ms. Dortch,

On July 30, 2025, Jonathan Thessin of the American Bankers Association; Michael Pryor of Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, LLP, on behalf of ACA International; Philip Bohi of the American Financial Services Association; Clara Kim of the Bank Policy Institute; and Aryeh Fishman of the Edison Electric Institute (collectively, the Associations) met with Edyael Casaperalta, Legal Advisor to Commissioner Anna M. Gomez, and Cassiopeia Porter, Legal Intern to Commissioner Gomez, to discuss the Report and Order (Order) released by the Federal Communications Commission (Commission) on February 16, 2024 regarding revocation of consent under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA).

The Associations' members respect and carry out customer requests to opt out of receiving autodialed or prerecorded voice calls or text messages under the TCPA. But two aspects of the Order harm consumers – and contravene Congress' intent when it passed the TCPA – by creating a "barrier to the normal, expected or desired communications between businesses and their customers." The Commission should rescind these provisions.

First, the Order requires a business that receives a text from a consumer (i.e., "stop") in response to one type of message to stop receiving all future communications from that business by phone or text on unrelated matters – even if that was not the consumer's intent. Thus, a consumer's "stop" text message sent in response to an autodialed past-due message could lead the financial institution to opt the customer out of all consented-to messages from the institution, including fraud alerts. This could result in increased fraud perpetrated against the consumer. The same risk applies to electric utility customers because the rule could prevent essential safety and service-related messages such as outage notifications, safety alerts, and billing and payment reminders, if a customer revokes consent to one type of communication. The record demonstrates strong support for rescinding the "revoke all" provision, with healthcare, taxpayer, and industry stakeholders all expressing strong concern over the detrimental impact this provision (or the Commission's broader revocation framework) would have on their company or members.

In a separate provision in the Order, the Commission stated that a revocation request made using the words "stop," "quit," "end," "revoke," "opt out," "cancel," or "unsubscribe" that is sent in reply to an incoming text message constitutes a revocation. We support this provision. Establishing a standardized set of words that, if used, would create a presumption that the revocation attempt is reasonable provides clarity to both consumers and businesses. However, the Commission also stated in the Order that if a consumer uses words other than those listed above, the caller must treat the reply text message as a valid revocation request "if a reasonable person would understand those words to have conveyed a request to revoke consent." This provision may lead consumers to send messages with non-standard text (e.g., "I do not want to receive any more texts") that cannot be read by automated processes, as a means to revoke consent. This would frustrate consumers—whose revocation requests may not be immediately processed—and text senders, who would need to use non-automated processes to process consumers' revocations of consent.

Thank you for your consideration of these views.

Sincerely,
American Bankers Association
ACA International
American Financial Services Association
Bank Policy Institute
Edison Electric Institute