Is a Text Message a "Telephone Call"? The Seventh Circuit Is About to Decide, and a Lot of TCPA Lawsuits Are Riding on the Answer
On May 21, three judges on the Seventh Circuit sat through oral argument on a question that sounds almost too simple to need a federal appeals court: is a text message a telephone call?
It is not a simple question. It is the question, and how the court answers it in Steidinger v. Blackstone Medical Services is going to determine whether a meaningful slice of the TCPA lawsuit machine keeps running in Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin, or whether it grinds to a halt and waits for the Supreme Court to sort out a circuit split.
Here is what happened. Blackstone Medical Services sells at-home sleep apnea tests out of Florida, and it texts a lot of people. A group of consumers say they told Blackstone to stop texting them, and it kept texting them anyway. They sued under a specific piece of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act — Section 227(c)(5) — which gives people a private right to sue over repeated unwanted "telephone calls" after they have asked a company to stop, or after they have registered on the national Do Not Call list. The trial court (my home court in the Central District of Illinois) dismissed the case in 2025, ruling that a text message is not a "telephone call" under that section. The plaintiffs appealed, and now three Seventh Circuit judges have to decide whether Congress, writing in 1991, meant to cover text messages when it used the words "telephone call,” a technology that, as a mass consumer product, did not exist yet.
If that sounds like a narrow, technical statutory puzzle, it is. It is also worth several billion dollars a year in litigation exposure, give or take, because TCPA cases are not won on damages that feel proportionate to the harm. They are won on statutory damages of $500 to $1,500 per text, multiplied across a class. A company that sends the wrong text to the wrong list one too many times is not looking at a slap on the wrist. It is looking at a number with a lot of zeros.
Two Different TCPA Claims, and Why the Difference Matters
This is the part that gets lost in a lot of the coverage, so it is worth slowing down.
The TCPA is not one law. It is several different provisions bolted together over three decades, and they do different things. Section 227(b) is the one most people have heard of. It restricts autodialed calls and texts and prerecorded messages, and courts have known for years that a text sent by automated equipment can violate it. That fight is mostly settled. Nobody is seriously arguing in 2026 that an autodialer text is exempt from Section 227(b) just because it is a text instead of a voice call.
Section 227(c)(5) is a different animal. It is the Do Not Call provision, the one that lets a person who registered their number, or who told a specific company to stop contacting them, sue over repeated unwanted "telephone calls" or "telephone solicitations." For years, plaintiffs' lawyers have treated text messages as fair game under (c)(5) the same way they are fair game under (b). Blackstone is the company that finally made a court ask whether that assumption was ever correct.
That distinction is why a Seventh Circuit ruling against the plaintiffs in Steidinger would not kill TCPA text litigation outright. Autodialed marketing texts sent without consent would still be exposed under Section 227(b). What it would kill, or at least badly wound, is the specific category of lawsuit built on the theory that an unwanted text after a stop request or a Do Not Call registration is automatically actionable the same way an unwanted phone call is. That theory has fueled a lot of demand letters, and a ruling that texts are not "calls" for (c)(5) purposes takes a real weapon out of that arsenal.
What the Judges Were Signaling
Oral argument tea leaves are tea leaves, and I would not bet the farm on reading them. But the reporting on the May 21 argument is fairly consistent: Judge Thomas Kirsch and Judge Doris Pryor both leaned hard into the 1991 meaning of "telephone call," and both appeared skeptical that Congress intended the phrase to reach a technology that was not yet a consumer product when the TCPA was written. Judge Nancy Maldonado reportedly kept her cards closer to her chest, which means if the panel splits, she may end up writing the deciding word.
The court's focus on 1991 matters because it tells you which interpretive tool the judges are reaching for. If the panel anchors its decision to what "telephone call" meant to an ordinary person in 1991 — when "telephone call" meant a voice conversation, full stop. That points toward a ruling for Blackstone. If the panel instead asks what a telephone call functionally is today, regardless of what existed in 1991, that points toward the plaintiffs. Statutory interpretation fights like this one usually come down to exactly that choice, dressed up in different language depending on the judge.
The Ninth Circuit Already Went the Other Way
This case does not exist in a vacuum, and that is the part that should make every business paying attention sit up straight.
In January 2026, the Ninth Circuit decided Howard v. Republican National Committee and held, flatly, that a text message is a "call" under the TCPA. The court reasoned that a "call" is an attempt to communicate by telephone, and text messaging plainly fits that definition because it is communication between telephones. One judge dissented on a related issue about embedded video and prerecorded voice, but the core holding, texts are calls, was not close.
So here is where things stand. The Ninth Circuit says yes, a text is a call. The Seventh Circuit is about to say something, and based on the argument, it may very well say no. If it does, you have a circuit split on a question that controls how a major statutory damages regime applies to one of the most common forms of business communication in existence. That is exactly the kind of split the Supreme Court tends to resolve, and the early read among people who track this closely is that cert is a real possibility if the Seventh Circuit breaks from the Ninth. A decision is expected sometime in late summer or early fall 2026.
Why I Am Telling You This If You Run a Business
I represent companies, often e-commerce companies, not professional plaintiffs, and I want to be straightforward about why this case should be on your radar even if you have never been sued.
If you send text messages to customers, appointment reminders, marketing promotions, shipping updates, anything, you are operating in a legal environment that is actively unsettled right now in a way that directly affects your exposure. A demand letter that shows up tomorrow citing a Do Not Call violation for unwanted texts is built on a legal theory that a federal appeals court is actively deciding whether to accept. That is not a reason to ignore the letter. It is a reason to fight it with the right argument instead of writing a check because the letter sounds confident.
I have seen this pattern before, and it follows a script. A consumer, often one who has done this many times, claims they asked a company to stop texting and got texted anyway. The demand letter cites statutory damages that sound enormous relative to the actual harm, because that is the entire design of TCPA's damages provision. These letters are often from Jibrael Hindi, Keogh Law, Andrew Perrong, Edelson PC, LawHQ, Avi Kaufman, Manny Hiraldo, Kazerouni Law, Daniel Hutchinson, Paronich Law, Mark Dobronski, and Mike Greenwald. The claims do not require proof of real injury, just proof of the violation. The letter implies the law is settled and the only choice is to negotiate. In the Seventh Circuit right now, on the specific question of whether a text is a "telephone call" for Do Not Call purposes, the law is not settled. It is sitting in front of three judges who heard argument less than two months ago and have not ruled.
That matters for negotiating posture. A defendant who knows the underlying legal theory is contested has leverage a defendant who assumes liability does not have. It also matters for compliance going forward — not because the law is uncertain, but because uncertainty is exactly the environment in which businesses should be most careful about consent records, opt-out handling, and documentation, regardless of which way the Seventh Circuit eventually rules.
What to Watch For
The decision in Steidinger is expected in the next few months. When it lands, one of two things happens. Either the Seventh Circuit aligns with the Ninth and texts are calls everywhere, in which case the Do Not Call theory of TCPA liability for text messages is alive and well across the country and businesses should treat unwanted-text complaints with the same seriousness as unwanted-call complaints. Or the Seventh Circuit breaks from the Ninth, in which case businesses in Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin get real protection against a specific category of TCPA claim. Well, at least until the Supreme Court decides whether to weigh in and resolve the split.
Either way, this is not a case to read about after the fact. If your business sends text messages to customers and you have received, or are worried about receiving, a TCPA demand letter built on a Do Not Call theory, the timing of where this law stands right now is the difference between negotiating from strength and negotiating from assumption.
If you have gotten one of these letters, or you want your text messaging practices looked at before someone sends you one, get in touch. You can contact me HERE.
Jonathan Phillips is an attorney at in Illinois. He represents those facing TCPA litigation and other consumer-protection claims tied to marketing and e-commerce communications. Nothing in this post is legal advice.