Does TCPA Consent Expire? Dormant Customers and List Cleanups
Federal TCPA consent has no built-in expiration date. Nothing in the FCC’s consent rules says written consent lapses after a year, and the Ninth Circuit has held that ending a customer relationship doesn’t revoke consent by itself. Two other clocks do run, though. The established business relationship exception to the Do Not Call rules ends 18 months after a purchase, and phone numbers get disconnected and reassigned to strangers. A year-end list cleanup that accounts for both clocks leaves a company in a strong position.
Does written consent to marketing texts expire?
Not under the FCC’s definition.
The rule defines prior express written consent as “an agreement, in writing, bearing the signature of the person called that clearly authorizes the seller to deliver or cause to be delivered to the person called advertisements or telemarketing messages using an automatic telephone dialing system or an artificial or prerecorded voice,” together with the telephone number, under 47 C.F.R. § 64.1200(f)(9). The definition says nothing about duration. Consent lasts until it’s revoked, limited to the seller and the kinds of messages the agreement covers.
Revocation is the real limit. A consumer may revoke “by using any reasonable method to clearly express a desire not to receive further calls or text messages from the caller or sender,” under § 64.1200(a)(10), and the request must be honored “within a reasonable time not to exceed ten business days from receipt of such request.”
Does a canceled account revoke consent?
Not by itself, according to the Ninth Circuit.
In Van Patten v. Vertical Fitness Group, LLC, 847 F.3d 1037 (9th Cir. 2017), a gym member gave his cell number on a membership application, canceled the membership, and later received texts inviting former members back. The court held he hadn’t revoked consent: “Revocation of consent must be clearly made and express a desire not to be called or texted. That was not done here.” It also found the texts within the scope of his consent because, as the court put it, they “related to the reason Van Patten gave his number in the first place.” The court affirmed summary judgment for the defendants.
Two limits on that result. The texts in Van Patten were sent in 2012, before the FCC’s written-consent requirement for automated marketing took effect, so the case addresses prior express consent, not signed written consent. And after the Supreme Court’s June 2025 decision in McLaughlin Chiropractic Associates, Inc. v. McKesson Corp., district courts “are not bound by the agency’s interpretation, but instead must determine the meaning of the law under ordinary principles of statutory interpretation, affording appropriate respect to the agency’s interpretation.” Van Patten leaned on FCC orders to measure consent. I’d expect defendants to keep winning on its reasoning in the Ninth Circuit, but plaintiffs now have more room to argue the statute alone.
Our posts on the scope of TCPA consent and contracts that try to make consent irrevocable cover the neighboring questions.
Which clock runs out for dormant customers?
The established business relationship, for Do Not Call purposes.
The FCC’s Do Not Call rule protects residential subscribers on the National Do Not Call Registry from telephone solicitations. One way a call escapes the rule is that it isn’t a telephone solicitation at all, because the caller has an established business relationship with the person. That relationship rests “on the basis of the subscriber’s purchase or transaction with the entity within the eighteen (18) months immediately preceding the date of the telephone call or on the basis of the subscriber’s inquiry or application regarding products or services offered by the entity within the three months immediately preceding the date of the call,” under § 64.1200(f)(5). The relationship also ends early if either party terminates it, and a seller-specific do-not-call request always terminates it.
So a customer whose last purchase was 19 months ago is, for Registry purposes, a stranger, unless your company has another exception such as signed written permission. If your holiday or New Year campaign leans on the relationship instead of written consent, the date of each customer’s last transaction is the field that decides who you can call.
For texts, the private Do Not Call claim faces an added defense this year. In Jones v. Blackstone Medical Services, LLC, No. 1:24-cv-01074 (C.D. Ill. July 21, 2025), the court held that “Section 227(c)(5) of the TCPA does not regulate text messages,” and in Davis v. CVS Pharmacy, Inc., No. 4:24-cv-477 (N.D. Fla. Aug. 26, 2025), the court concluded that a text message isn’t a telephone call under § 227(c)(5) and dismissed the claim on the merits. In Wilson v. MEDVIDI Inc., No. 5:25-cv-03996 (N.D. Cal. Oct. 7, 2025), the court read “telephone call” in § 227(c) to cover the text messages at issue, though it dismissed the complaint on other grounds with leave to amend. Jones is on appeal to the Seventh Circuit. These district court rulings bind no other court, so I’d keep scrubbing texts while raising the argument in any texts-only Do Not Call case.
California’s own Do Not Call statute uses the same 18-month window for its established business relationship exception, in Business and Professions Code § 17592(e)(4). It also treats a call as presumptively not made at a subscriber’s express request if “The call is made 30 business days after the last date on which the subscriber consented to be contacted,” under § 17592(e)(2)(B). That presumption applies to the express-request exception. The state’s exception for a signed written agreement, in § 17592(e)(1), states no time limit.
Why do old phone numbers create risk even when consent was valid?
Because the person who consented may no longer have the number.
The FCC tried to handle this in 2015 with a one-call safe harbor for reassigned numbers. The D.C. Circuit rejected that approach in ACA International v. FCC, 885 F.3d 687 (D.C. Cir. 2018), concluding that it “must set aside the Commission’s treatment of reassigned numbers as a whole.”
The current protection is the Reassigned Numbers Database safe harbor in § 64.1200(m). A caller isn’t liable for calling a number that has been reassigned since consent was obtained if it queried the database, got a “no” answer about whether the number had been permanently disconnected since the consent date, and the call resulted from the database answering wrong. The caller bears “the burden of proof and persuasion.”
In my view, any list with customers who’ve been quiet for a year or more should run through the database before a campaign. A wrong-number plaintiff never consented to anything, so the quality of your original consent records doesn’t help you there.
Consent-timing claims and the defenses that answer them
| Claim theory | Statute or rule | Exposure per call or text | Defenses |
|---|---|---|---|
| Automated marketing to a dormant customer without written consent | 47 U.S.C. § 227(b)(1)(A)(iii), (b)(3); 47 C.F.R. § 64.1200(a)(2) | $500 or actual loss, whichever is greater, and up to $1,500 if willful or knowing | Signed written consent that was never revoked, or no autodialer used |
| Solicitation to a Registry number after the 18-month window | 47 U.S.C. § 227(c)(5); 47 C.F.R. § 64.1200(c)(2), (f)(5) | Up to $500 or actual loss, whichever is greater, and up to $1,500 if willful or knowing | Signed written permission, the more-than-one-call threshold, or reasonable practices and procedures |
| Call or text to a reassigned number | 47 U.S.C. § 227(b); 47 C.F.R. § 64.1200(m) | $500 or actual loss, whichever is greater, and up to $1,500 if willful or knowing | Reassigned Numbers Database safe harbor |
The damages rules are in 47 U.S.C. § 227, subsections (b)(3) and (c)(5). Whether to increase an award is up to the court.
A year-end list cleanup, and what to keep if a claim arrives
The firm’s TCPA defense lawyers page covers how a single claim can grow into a class action. When one arrives over a message to a dormant customer, gather:
- The consent record for the number, with the date and form version, plus the call and text logs and platform data, all under a litigation hold.
- The opt-out and internal do-not-call records, with the date each request came in and when it was processed.
- The National Do Not Call Registry scrub records, the Registry versions used, and any Reassigned Numbers Database query results with dates.
- The customer’s transaction history showing the last purchase or inquiry date, along with vendor contracts and message templates.
- A lawyer’s advice before you respond to the demand, contact the person, or offer to settle.
Questions about how long TCPA consent lasts
Should we re-confirm consent with customers we haven’t texted in years?
Re-confirming is a reasonable choice, but do it carefully. A re-permission text is itself a text, and if the person has revoked or the number was reassigned, it can be the message that draws a claim. Running the list through the Reassigned Numbers Database first, and re-confirming by email where you can, reduces that risk.
Does consent end when a customer closes an account?
Not automatically. Van Patten held that canceling a membership didn’t revoke consent, because revocation must be express. Closing an account may itself end the established business relationship for Do Not Call purposes, so don’t count on the rest of the 18 months after a cancellation. It may also narrow the messages that fall within the scope of the original consent.
Can we keep calling a customer for 18 months after a purchase even if they’re on the Registry?
The established business relationship lets you make telephone solicitations to that customer for 18 months, under § 64.1200(f)(5), unless they ask you to stop. It doesn’t replace written consent for autodialed or prerecorded marketing, which is a separate rule.
Defending claims over messages to former customers
If your company has been sued over calls or texts to customers it hadn’t contacted in a long time, the consent records, transaction dates, and reassigned-number checks usually decide the case. Rosenberger + Kawabata represents businesses defending TCPA lawsuits and class actions through its business litigation practice, including claims involving messages to inactive customers and reassigned numbers. 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 rules are at 47 C.F.R. § 64.1200, in the eCFR version as of November 28, 2025. California’s Do Not Call statute is Business and Professions Code § 17592.
The court decisions are McLaughlin Chiropractic Associates, Inc. v. McKesson Corp., No. 23-1226 (U.S. June 20, 2025); Van Patten v. Vertical Fitness Group, LLC, 847 F.3d 1037 (9th Cir. 2017); and ACA International v. FCC, 885 F.3d 687 (D.C. Cir. 2018).
This post is general information about the Telephone Consumer Protection Act and related laws as of November 28, 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.