Georgia’s Do Not Call statute, O.C.G.A. § 46-5-27, lets a consumer sue after more than one solicitation call in 12 months to a number on the state’s list, which includes Georgia’s share of the national Registry. Damages run up to $1,000 per violation, or actual loss if greater. A 2024 amendment dropped the old knowledge requirement, made sellers liable for vendor calls, and allowed class actions. The statute still covers only voice calls, and a texting business’s defense starts there.
What does Georgia’s statute prohibit?
Solicitation calls to numbers on the state’s no-call list. Subsection (c) provides that “No person or entity shall make or cause to be made on behalf of any person or entity any telephone solicitation” to a residential, mobile, or wireless subscriber in Georgia who has given notice of an objection to the state Public Service Commission.
Georgia doesn’t run a separate list that a business has to buy. Subsection (d)(4) directs the commission to “include the part of such single national data base that relates to Georgia” in the state database. A number on the national Do Not Call Registry with a Georgia connection is, for practical purposes, on Georgia’s list too.
Two conduct rules sit beside the list. A caller must identify the business making the call at the start of the call, and can’t use any method to block the recipient’s caller ID. Violations of either rule count toward a private claim.
Does the Georgia law apply to text messages?
The text of the statute says it covers voice calls. The definition in subsection (b)(3) covers “any voice communication over a telephone line” made to encourage a purchase, a rental, or an investment. The legislature rewrote large parts of the section in 2024 and left that definition alone.
That’s a strong argument for a business sued over marketing texts. Compare Arizona, which added the words “or text message” to its Do Not Call statute in 2023, as covered in the earlier post on Arizona’s telephone solicitation law. Georgia hasn’t done that. A plaintiff will point to the clause saying a communication “may be from a live operator, through the use of ADAD equipment as defined in Code Section 46-5-23, or by other means,” and argue that a text is another means. The answer is that the clause describes how a voice communication is delivered, not what counts as one.
Texts aren’t free of risk in Georgia. A text campaign can still draw a federal Do Not Call claim, and a business that mixes calls and texts can face both statutes over the same customer list.
What did the 2024 amendment change?
It made the private claim easier to bring and harder to defend. According to the history note on the codified section, Senate Bill 73 took effect July 1, 2024. Before the amendment, a consumer could recover “up to $2,000.00 in damages for each such knowing violation.” The amended statute removed the knowledge requirement and cut the per-violation figure to up to $1,000.
The bigger changes were structural. The current subsection (i) lets a consumer sue “the person or entity that made the telephone solicitation or the person or entity that the telephone solicitation was made on behalf of, or both.” It also allows a class action under Georgia’s class action statute, “for which the damages limitation in subparagraph (A) of this paragraph shall not apply.”
Read that class action sentence carefully. It doesn’t create a new damages figure. It lifts the per-violation cap for class claims, which leaves the measure of class damages open, and a defendant should press that point from the start.
Is a seller liable for its vendor’s calls?
Usually, unless it can prove the compliance defense. Subsection (j) says it isn’t a defense that the defendant “did not make the telephone solicitation or was not aware that such telephone solicitation was in violation of this Code section,” if the call was made on its behalf under “a written or verbal agreement, contract, request, or employment relationship.”
The same subsection gives the seller a way out. It’s a defense if the seller set up policies to stop the caller from violating the statute and “mandated and enforced compliance with such policies and procedures.” Each half of that sentence needs proof. A written vendor policy that nobody audited won’t meet the “enforced” part.
That’s a different test from the old one. The pre-2024 defense asked whether the defendant had “established and implemented, with due care, reasonable practices and procedures.” The new version focuses on the seller’s control over the calling vendor, so the vendor contract and the audit trail matter more than the seller’s internal training.
What other defenses does the statute give a business?
Several, and most are broader than the federal rules. The definition of telephone solicitation in subsection (b)(3) excludes calls made with the subscriber’s “prior express invitation or permission” and calls by a business with which the subscriber “has a prior or current business or personal relationship.” Unlike the federal rule, Georgia’s relationship exception has no 18-month limit written into it.
The 2024 amendment added a wrong-number defense in subsection (j.1). It applies when the call went to a subscriber “whose telephone number was provided in error by another subscriber,” so long as the defendant didn’t know, or have reason to know, about the error. That fits the common case where a customer typed the wrong digits on a form. The earlier post on wrong-number TCPA exposure covers the federal side of the same problem.
The statute also excludes calls by people licensed or regulated under three chapters it lists by number, which include Georgia’s rules for lawyers. A business relying on that exclusion should check the licensing chapter before assuming it applies.
| Claim | Statute | Who can bring it | Exposure | Defenses that answer it |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Calls to numbers on the Georgia list | O.C.G.A. § 46-5-27(c), (i) | Consumer, after more than one call in 12 months | Up to $1,000 per violation or actual loss if greater, with no per-violation cap in a class action | Texts aren’t voice calls, permission, prior business relationship, wrong number |
| Caller ID blocking or no identification | O.C.G.A. § 46-5-27(g), (i) | Consumer | Same as above | Recorded opening scripts, carrier caller ID records |
| Attorney general action | O.C.G.A. § 46-5-27(h) | Attorney General | Civil penalty up to $2,000 per violation | Same defenses, plus the vendor-policy defense |
| Federal Do Not Call claim | 47 U.S.C. § 227(c)(5) | Consumer | Up to $500 per violation, more if willful or knowing | Consent, business relationship within 18 months, safe harbor |
What to collect when a Georgia Do Not Call claim arrives
- Hold the call logs and recordings for the claimant’s number, and confirm whether each contact was a voice call, a prerecorded message, or a text.
- Pull every opt-out and internal do-not-call entry for the number, with dates, across each vendor that called for the business.
- Gather the Registry scrub records and their version dates for each campaign that reached a Georgia area code.
- Collect the vendor contracts, the written compliance policies the business gave each vendor, and the audit records showing how it enforced them.
- Have a lawyer review the file before the business answers the demand, contacts the claimant, or offers anything to settle.
Step four decides the vicarious liability fight, and it’s the one most businesses can’t assemble after the fact. Lawyers defending Georgia telemarketing claims will ask for the audit trail first. The earlier posts on internal do-not-call policies and on state mini-TCPA laws for texting cover the policy side and the other states.
Questions about Georgia’s Do Not Call law
Does a California company have to follow Georgia’s statute?
If it calls Georgia numbers, yes. The statute reaches solicitations to subscribers “in this state,” and subsection (l) lets Georgia courts exercise personal jurisdiction over nonresidents under the state’s long-arm statute. A California seller whose vendor dials Georgia area codes should expect to be sued there.
Can a consumer sue under both Georgia law and the TCPA?
Yes. Subsection (m) says the statute’s remedies “are not exclusive” of other claims. Plaintiffs usually plead both. The earlier post on TCPA preemption of state telemarketing laws covers why the federal statute rarely knocks out the state claim.
Does one call create liability?
No. A private plaintiff must have received more than one solicitation within 12 months from or on behalf of the same seller. The attorney general’s enforcement authority doesn’t carry that threshold, so a single call can still matter in a state investigation.
Does Georgia require a business to buy a state list?
No. Georgia folds its part of the national Registry into the state database, so a business that scrubs against the national Registry and keeps the records has done the scrubbing Georgia expects. The earlier post on state do-not-call registries in Texas and Florida covers states that keep their own lists.
Defending Georgia Do Not Call claims
If your company is facing a Georgia Do Not Call claim over calls a vendor placed, the vendor contract and the record of how you enforced your compliance policy usually decide whether the seller is liable at all. Rosenberger + Kawabata represents businesses defending TCPA lawsuits and class actions through its business litigation practice, including claims involving vendor calls to Georgia numbers on the Do Not Call Registry. Contact Rosenberger + Kawabata online for a confidential consultation, or call (310) 894-6921.
Sources
The state statute is O.C.G.A. § 46-5-27, as amended by Senate Bill 73 (Ga. L. 2024, p. 912), effective July 1, 2024. The federal statute is the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, 47 U.S.C. § 227.
This post is general information about the Telephone Consumer Protection Act and related laws as of July 24, 2026. 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.