The Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit has denied a request for an en banc hearing in the case of Salcedo v. Hanna, in which it was ruled the receipt of a single text message was not enough to violate the Telephone Consumer Protection Act.
The denial means that the only other legal avenue available to the plaintiff is to appeal the case to the Supreme Court.
A panel of three judges from the Eleventh Circuit ruled in August that the receipt of a single text message was not enough grounds for a plaintiff to have standing to file a lawsuit under Article III of the Constitution. The plaintiff had received one text message from the defendant, offering a 10% discount on legal services.
The ruling from the Appeals Court had reversed a lower court’s decision that receiving one text message was enough for a plaintiff to claim standing to file a lawsuit.
Under Spokeo v. Robins, the Supreme Court ruled that a plaintiff must suffer a “concrete injury” in order to have standing to sue. The Eleventh Circuit ruled that receiving one text message — which constitutes a statutory violation of the TCPA and has been enough for a court to confer standing — does not constitute an “intrusion into the privacy of the home” and was not the type of harm Congress intended when it enacted the TCPA.
The plaintiff had requested the en banc hearing, arguing that the decision departs from other Appellate Court rulings. In denying the request, the Eleventh Circuit said that “no judge in regular active service on the Court having requested that the Court be polled on rehearing en banc, the Petition for Rehearing En Banc is also denied.”
