Can a TCPA Lawsuit Be Paused? Stay Motions and Pending Appeals

The Supreme Court heard argument on January 21, 2025, on whether the Hobbs Act requires district courts to accept the FCC’s legal interpretation of the TCPA. An Eleventh Circuit challenge to the FCC’s new consent rule, which has a January 27 compliance date, is also pending. Companies defending TCPA suits are asking whether their cases can wait for those answers. Sometimes they can. A federal court can stay a case, but the defendant has to show concretely how the pending decision would narrow its own case.

What gives a federal court the power to pause a TCPA case?

Every federal court has inherent authority over its own calendar. The Supreme Court said in Landis v. North American Co. that “the power to stay proceedings is incidental to the power inherent in every court to control the disposition of the causes on its docket with economy of time and effort for itself, for counsel, and for litigants.” The same opinion sets the bar for the party asking: “the suppliant for a stay must make out a clear case of hardship or inequity in being required to go forward, if there is even a fair possibility that the stay for which he prays will work damage to some one else.”

In the Ninth Circuit, which covers California, judges weigh three interests drawn from CMAX, Inc. v. Hall and restated in Lockyer v. Mirant Corp.: “the possible damage which may result from the granting of a stay, the hardship or inequity which a party may suffer in being required to go forward, and the orderly course of justice measured in terms of the simplifying or complicating of issues, proof, and questions of law which could be expected to result from a stay.” Lockyer adds a line every TCPA defendant should expect to see quoted back: being required to defend a suit, “without more,” isn’t the hardship Landis means.

The other case doesn’t have to decide yours. The Ninth Circuit explained in Leyva v. Certified Grocers of California, Ltd. that the power to stay pending other proceedings “does not require that the issues in such proceedings are necessarily controlling of the action before the court.” The same opinion supplies the main limit: “A stay should not be granted unless it appears likely the other proceedings will be concluded within a reasonable time in relation to the urgency of the claims presented to the court.” In Dependable Highway Express, Inc. v. Navigators Insurance Co., the court put it more bluntly: “Generally, stays should not be indefinite in nature.”

When does primary jurisdiction send a TCPA question to the FCC?

Only in a limited set of circumstances. Primary jurisdiction lets a court hold off on an issue Congress gave an agency to work out. In Clark v. Time Warner Cable, the Ninth Circuit said the doctrine applies only when a claim “requires resolution of an issue of first impression, or of a particularly complicated issue that Congress has committed to a regulatory agency.” When it applies, “the court either stays proceedings or dismisses the case without prejudice, so that the parties may seek an administrative ruling.”

Two features of the doctrine matter in TCPA cases. First, the Ninth Circuit treats efficiency as the “deciding factor,” and in Astiana v. Hain Celestial Group, Inc. it explained that “primary jurisdiction is not required when a referral to the agency would significantly postpone a ruling that a court is otherwise competent to make.” Astiana also held that the district court there “erred by dismissing the case without prejudice rather than staying proceedings,” so a court that invokes the doctrine will often stay the case instead of dismissing it. Second, the agency doesn’t automatically pick up the question. Clark explains that “the parties are responsible for initiating administrative proceedings themselves.”

TCPA defendants have tried this before. In 2019, a gym operator in Singer v. Las Vegas Athletic Clubs asked the District of Nevada to wait for the FCC’s then-anticipated rulemaking on the autodialer definition. The court refused, noting that “Ninth Circuit courts have consistently rejected requests to stay actions pending further FCC rulemaking.” It also quoted an earlier decision that “this cycle of staying a case while an FCC order is pending only to have the FCC order challenged in court has played out before, demonstrating the real possibility of indefinite delay.” The Singer court also noted that “LVAC’s argument presupposes that the FCC’s order will be favorable to its position.”

The Supreme Court’s 2024 decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo held that “Courts must exercise their independent judgment in deciding whether an agency has acted within its statutory authority, as the APA requires.” Loper Bright wasn’t a primary jurisdiction case, but in my view it makes a referral on a pure question of statutory meaning a harder sell. I’d say primary jurisdiction is worth raising only when the open question is technical, the FCC is actively working on it, and the company is prepared to file something at the agency so the court isn’t waiting on nothing.

Should a defendant ask for a stay while McLaughlin v. McKesson is pending?

It depends on whether a claim or defense in your case rests on an FCC interpretation. The question the Supreme Court agreed to decide in McLaughlin Chiropractic Associates v. McKesson Corp. is “Whether the Hobbs Act required the district court in this case to accept the FCC’s legal interpretation of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act,” according to the Court’s questions-presented page. The Court granted review on October 4, 2024. It heard argument on January 21, 2025, according to its docket. A decision is pending.

Courts went through the same exercise four years ago, while Facebook, Inc. v. Duguid was pending, and two orders from that period show the difference between a motion that works and one that doesn’t. In Wilson v. Rater8, LLC, the Southern District of California granted a stay in a text-message autodialer case. The court found that “the burden of litigating an issue that may be mooted adds to that potential hardship,” and that “The duration of the stay requested by Defendants is reasonably determinate.” Rater8 rejected the plaintiff’s lost-evidence argument as speculative and noted that “Plaintiff could also move the Court to lift the stay and pursue targeted discovery in the event a ruling by the Supreme Court is delayed.”

Weeks earlier, the District of Oregon denied a stay in McKay v. DHM Research, Inc.. The defendant argued its texting system wasn’t an autodialer under any reading, and the court wrote: “Because Defendant contends that its equipment is not an ATDS, it is not clear how the outcome of Facebook would simplify any questions here.” For what Duguid held about autodialers, see our post on autodialer claims after Duguid.

That contrast is the practical lesson for McLaughlin. A stay motion has to show how the pending answer could simplify the case. If your best defense wins no matter what the Supreme Court says, the judge will ask why the case should wait. I’d make the McLaughlin argument where a claim or a key defense depends on an FCC ruling that a district court might read differently if it isn’t bound by it, and I’d spell out in the motion which issues it would narrow under each outcome.

Does the Eleventh Circuit’s single-seller consent case justify a stay?

For lawsuits about past calls and texts, usually not. The FCC’s rule changes prior express written consent, the signed written agreement required before most autodialed or prerecorded telemarketing calls and texts. The FCC’s Federal Register notice says “The Commission requires that such consent apply to a single seller at a time,” and “Compliance with 47 CFR 64.1200(f)(9) is required as of January 27, 2025.”

Insurance Marketing Coalition Limited petitioned the Eleventh Circuit for review in Insurance Marketing Coalition Ltd. v. FCC, No. 24-10277. Its opening brief argues that the order’s redefinition of prior express consent exceeds the Commission’s authority, that the order violates the First Amendment, and that Part III.D, the part that contains the one-to-one consent requirement, “should be set aside under the Administrative Procedure Act.” The court denied a stay of the FCC’s order in May 2024, writing that “The Petitioner’s motion to stay the Respondent’s Second Report and Order is DENIED.” It heard argument on December 18, 2024. The court hasn’t ruled.

Using IMC to pause a lawsuit runs into a timing problem. The single-seller requirement applies from its compliance date forward, so a case about calls made in 2023 or 2024 doesn’t depend on it. My view is that the IMC case matters most for compliance planning, not existing litigation. Our post on the scope of TCPA consent explains how the single-seller requirement fits with the broader rules on what a consent covers.

How do courts weigh the delay against the harm to each side?

Courts applying Landis and primary jurisdiction look at the same few facts.

In my view, exposure belongs in the hardship discussion too. For violations of § 227(b), including autodialed and prerecorded calls, 47 U.S.C. § 227(b)(3) lets a plaintiff recover actual monetary loss or $500 for each violation, whichever is greater, and a court may in its discretion increase the award to as much as three times that amount, up to $1,500 per violation where statutory damages apply, if the violation was willful or knowing. Section 227(c)(5) gives a Do Not Call claim to a person who received more than one call within 12 months by or on behalf of the same entity in violation of the rules. It allows actual loss or up to $500 per violation, whichever is greater, with the same willful-or-knowing increase, and it gives the defendant an affirmative defense if it established and implemented, with due care, reasonable practices and procedures to prevent those calls. Multiplied across a putative class, those numbers can make the cost of litigating an issue that may soon be mooted concrete for a judge, though the cited cases treat the cost of defending, without more, as insufficient.

What record should a defendant build before asking for a stay?

Build it before you file, because the motion is only as good as the facts behind it. I’d file early, before the parties have spent heavily on discovery, because the efficiency argument shrinks with every month the case moves forward.

The motion itself should map each claim and defense to the pending question, describe the discovery a ruling could avoid (class-wide call data, vendor subpoenas, expert work), propose a defined endpoint such as notice to the court within 14 days of the decision, and offer status reports. I’d also offer to let narrow third-party preservation go forward. In Rater8, the court noted that the plaintiff could move to lift the stay for targeted discovery if the Supreme Court’s ruling were delayed.

The evidence work runs alongside the motion:

1. Put a litigation hold on call and text logs, dialer and texting-platform data, and the consent records for every number in the complaint, and offer the plaintiff a preservation stipulation.
2. Pull the opt-out records and the internal do-not-call list, with the date each request came in and was processed.
3. Gather the National Do Not Call Registry scrub records and the Registry version dates the company used.
4. Collect vendor and lead-source contracts, call scripts, and any prerecorded or AI-voice message files.
5. Talk to a lawyer before you answer a demand letter, contact the plaintiff, or make any settlement offer.

When a claim involving autodialed texts and FCC consent rules is filed as a proposed class action, the firm’s page on defending TCPA class actions in California covers what comes next.

A stay doesn’t stop the clock on the evidence. If the case resumes and the records are gone, the delay will have cost the company its defense.

Questions businesses ask about pausing a TCPA case

Does filing a motion to stay pause the case automatically?

No. Filing the motion doesn’t change any deadline. Discovery responses, initial disclosures, and scheduling-order dates all stand until the judge signs an order. Pair the stay motion with a request to extend near-term deadlines, or ask the plaintiff to stipulate to a short extension while the motion is pending. Assume nothing is paused until the order says so.

Will a plaintiff ever agree to a stay?

Sometimes. A plaintiff facing the same uncertainty may prefer to wait instead of litigating twice, and more so if the pending ruling could hurt its theory. In McKay, the court noted that stays granted in other Duguid-era cases often involved facts like Duguid’s or an agreed motion. A joint motion with a preservation agreement and a fixed check-in date is the easiest stay for a judge to sign.

What happens when the pending decision comes out?

The stay order usually answers that. In Rater8, the court required the parties to notify it within 14 days after the Supreme Court ruled. Be ready with a motion that applies the new decision to your case, whether that’s a renewed motion to dismiss, a motion for judgment on the pleadings, or a revised discovery plan.

Defending a TCPA case that may turn on a pending ruling

If your company is defending a TCPA case that depends on a question the Supreme Court, the Eleventh Circuit, or the FCC is about to answer, the time to build the stay record is before discovery ramps up. Rosenberger + Kawabata represents businesses defending TCPA lawsuits and class actions through its business litigation practice, including claims involving autodialed texts and FCC consent rules. Contact Rosenberger + Kawabata online for a free and confidential consultation, or call (310) 894-6921.

Sources

The statute is the Telephone Consumer Protection Act at 47 U.S.C. § 227. The FCC’s announcement of the January 27, 2025 compliance date for the single-seller consent rule is at 89 Fed. Reg. 87982 (Nov. 6, 2024).

The court decisions are Landis v. North American Co., 299 U.S. 248 (1936); Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, 144 S. Ct. 2244 (2024); Lockyer v. Mirant Corp., 398 F.3d 1098 (9th Cir. 2005); Leyva v. Certified Grocers of California, Ltd., 593 F.2d 857 (9th Cir. 1979); Dependable Highway Express, Inc. v. Navigators Insurance Co., 498 F.3d 1059 (9th Cir. 2007); Clark v. Time Warner Cable, 523 F.3d 1110 (9th Cir. 2008); Astiana v. Hain Celestial Group, Inc., 783 F.3d 753 (9th Cir. 2015); Singer v. Las Vegas Athletic Clubs, 376 F. Supp. 3d 1062 (D. Nev. 2019); Wilson v. Rater8, LLC, No. 20-cv-1515-DMS-LL (S.D. Cal. Feb. 2, 2021); and McKay v. DHM Research, Inc., No. 6:20-cv-01249-MC (D. Or. Dec. 11, 2020).

The pending matters are McLaughlin Chiropractic Associates, Inc. v. McKesson Corp., No. 23-1226 (U.S. argued Jan. 21, 2025) (docket, question presented), and Insurance Marketing Coalition Ltd. v. FCC, No. 24-10277 (11th Cir. argued Dec. 18, 2024) (opening brief, order denying stay).

This post is general information about the Telephone Consumer Protection Act and related laws as of January 22, 2025. It is not legal advice, and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. Courts and the FCC change the rules in this area often, and the outcome of any claim depends on its facts. Past results do not guarantee future outcomes.