On July 14, 2022, the Southern District of New York granted a defendant’s motion to dismiss in a class action lawsuit in which the plaintiff alleged a Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (“FDCPA”) violation based on the identification of the creditor in a collection letter. See Vincent Williams v. MRS BPO, L.L.C. d/b/a MRS Associates, No. 21-CV-6656 (CS), 2022 WL 2759036 (S.D.N.Y. July 14, 2022). The collection letter at issue misspelled the plaintiff’s first name and identified the merchant as Synchrony Networks and the creditor as Synchrony Bank in a text box under the date. The plaintiff contended that the letter violated section 1692g(a)(2) of the FDCPA because it failed to state the correct name of the creditor to whom the debt is owed. The plaintiff also argued that the collection letter violated section 1692e of the FDCPA because it falsely represented the character of the debt by failing to effectively provide the name of the creditor to whom the debt is owed. MORE >

On June 28, 2022, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (“CFPB”) issued an interpretive rule affirming that the Fair Credit Reporting Act (“FCRA”) does not prohibit states from enacting laws to regulate consumer credit reporting. Specifically, the CFPB declared that states have the ability to create their own state-level laws that are stricter than the FCRA. The CFPB justifies this reasoning by referring to “limited preemption exceptions” and argues that “[t]he legal interpretation issued today makes clear that federal law does not automatically hit delete on state data protections.” MORE >

On July 12, 2022, the House of Representatives introduced H.R. 8334 to amend the Communications Act of 1934 to prohibit the use of automated telephone equipment to send unsolicited text messages, and for other purposes.

Currently, the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (“TCPA”), which amended the Communications Act of 1934, defines an “Automatic Telephone Dialing System (“ATDS”) as equipment which has the capacity -

(A) to store or produce telephone numbers to be called, using a random or sequential number generator; and

(B) to dial such numbers.