McLaughlin v. McKesson: What the Supreme Court’s TCPA Ruling Means Now

Jun 20, 2025

By: Jeffrey Backman, Esq. and Roy Taub, Esq.

In a significant development for cases brought under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (“TCPA”), today the Supreme Court issued its decision in McLaughlin Chiropractic Associates, Inc. v. McKesson Corp., No. 23-1226. Congress enacted the TCPA in 1991 and, as is the case with most statutes, it directed a government agency, here the Federal Communications Commission (“FCC”), to issue regulations and orders to implement the TCPA. A law enacted in 1950, referred to as the Hobbs Act, provides for pre-enforcement judicial review of FCC orders and had long been interpreted as barring district courts from disagreeing with an agency’s interpretation of a statute in an order, whether in deciding a motion to dismiss, a motion for class certification, a motion for summary judgment, on jury instructions at trial, or in any other capacity; the court had no choice but to apply FCC orders, even if it disagreed with them.

In today’s decision, the Supreme Court held by a 6-3 vote that that understanding was incorrect. “The Hobbs Act does not preclude district courts from independently assessing whether an agency’s interpretation of the relevant statute is correct,” which is to be done “under ordinary principles of statutory interpretation, affording appropriate respect to the agency’s interpretation.” On the heels of the Supreme Court’s decision last term overruling the long-standing deferential approach to agencies’ interpretations of statutes, (Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, 603 U.S. 369 (2024)), today’s decision may have significant impact on TCPA litigation. In McLaughlin, the specific FCC order concerned whether online fax services fit within the TCPA’s definition of a “telephone facsimile machine.” See 47 U.S.C. § 227(a)(3). On remand the district court will now answer that question whereas previously it had ruled it could not. In the three decades since the TCPA has been enacted, the FCC has issued numerous orders interpreting the statute on a host of issues, all of which appear to now potentially be subject to re-examination in district court, something that had previously been foreclosed. This development in TCPA litigation further reinforces the need for innovative and strategic lawyering in this field.

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McLaughlin v. McKesson: What the Supreme Court’s TCPA Ruling Means Now

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