TCPA and Business Phone Numbers: Defending Calls and Texts

The Do Not Call rules cover only residential subscribers, so a true business line isn’t protected. Cell phones are harder. In California’s federal courts, a registered cell phone is presumed residential even when its owner runs a business from it, and the autodialer and prerecorded-voice rules reach every cell phone regardless of how it’s used. A company sued over calls to a business number can have a real defense built on proof of who pays for the number and how its owner holds it out.

Does the Do Not Call Registry cover business phone numbers?

No, not a number that really is a business line. Congress told the FCC to open a rulemaking “concerning the need to protect residential telephone subscribers’ privacy rights to avoid receiving telephone solicitations to which they object,” in 47 U.S.C. § 227(c)(1). The FCC’s rules bar telephone solicitations to “A residential telephone subscriber who has registered his or her telephone number on the national do-not-call registry,” and the same residential limit appears in the quiet-hours rule and the internal do-not-call list rule, all in 47 C.F.R. § 64.1200.

By the Do Not Call Registry I mean the national list the FTC runs, where people register numbers they don’t want sales calls on. A telephone solicitation is a call or message meant to sell something, with exceptions such as an established business relationship.

The FCC drew the business line in 2003 and held it in 2005. Its 2003 order said the national do-not-call rules “will also not prohibit calls to businesses” in FCC 03-153. When the Direct Marketing Association asked for an express exemption, the FCC’s 2005 reconsideration order declined but added: “To the extent that some business numbers have been inadvertently registered on the national registry, calls made to such numbers will not be considered violations of our rules.” I think that sentence is the most underused line in Do Not Call defense. On the FCC’s reading, a business number that lands on the registry by mistake still isn’t protected.

The same order refused to carve out home-based businesses. The FCC said “we will review such calls as they are brought to our attention to determine whether or not the call was made to a residential subscriber,” per the 2005 order. That’s why there’s no bright line. A plumber’s home phone can be residential, and so can a consultant’s cell.

Is a cell phone used for work a “residential” line?

It can be. In the Ninth Circuit a registered cell phone is presumed residential, and the caller has to rebut that presumption with evidence of how the line is held out and used. In its 2003 order, the FCC said it would “presume wireless subscribers who ask to be put on the national do-not-call list” to be residential subscribers, in FCC 03-153 at paragraph 36. The regulation pulls that order in by name, applying the rules to “telephone solicitations or telemarketing calls or text messages to wireless telephone numbers to the extent described in” the 2003 order, under § 64.1200(e).

The Ninth Circuit, which covers California, applied that presumption to mixed-use phones in Chennette v. Porch.com, Inc., 50 F.4th 1217 (9th Cir. 2022). The plaintiffs were home improvement contractors who alleged they received texts on cell phones they used for work and personal calls, and the case reached the court on a motion to dismiss. The court held that “a presumptively residential cell phone can be residential even when used for both personal and business purposes.” The opinion added that “Defendants may overcome the presumption by showing that plaintiffs use their cell phones to such an extent and in such a manner that the presumption is rebutted.” Judge Ikuta dissented in part.

Timing matters. Chennette said “After discovery, defendants may seek to argue that they have rebutted the presumption,” so a business-use defense generally has to wait for evidence. The exception is a record that gives the facts away early. In Barton v. Leadpoint, Inc., an unpublished 2023 Ninth Circuit memorandum, the court affirmed dismissal on the ground that the number was not residential, writing: “Because Barton uses the (718) area code number only for litigation purposes, a reasonable observer likely would not think that Barton has legitimate privacy concerns regarding that code number.”

Chennette relied on the FCC’s orders and cited Chevron for deferring to future FCC interpretations, and the Supreme Court has since overruled Chevron. “Chevron is overruled,” the Court wrote in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, 603 U.S. 369 (2024). In McLaughlin Chiropractic Associates v. McKesson Corp., 606 U.S. 146 (2025), it said district courts read the TCPA “affording appropriate respect to the agency’s interpretation,” without treating that interpretation as binding. Two weeks after Loper Bright, and nearly a year before McLaughlin, a defendant in the Northern District of California argued that cell phones can’t be residential at all. The court took notice of Loper Bright, wrote “The Court is bound to follow Chennette,” and said it would reach the same result without the FCC’s interpretation, in Lyman v. QuinStreet, Inc. (N.D. Cal. July 12, 2024). Our post on McLaughlin and FCC deference covers what changed.

My view: preserve the categorical argument. McLaughlin came after Chennette, and in state court Ninth Circuit precedent isn’t binding. In California federal court, though, I’d lead with the fact-based rebuttal, which is available in every case.

Do the autodialer and prerecorded-voice rules apply to business cell phones?

Yes. Section 227(b) has no residential limit for cell phones. Without prior express consent, it bars autodialed or artificial or prerecorded-voice calls “to any telephone number assigned to a paging service, cellular telephone service,” under 47 U.S.C. § 227(b)(1)(A)(iii). A prerecorded call plays a recorded or synthetic voice instead of a live person. Prior express consent means the person agreed to get the call, and for autodialed or prerecorded marketing calls the FCC’s rules require that agreement in writing. Whether a VoIP number counts as cellular service is a separate question, covered in our post on VoIP and Google Voice numbers.

Chennette held as much: “Section 227(b) thus covers calls to the cell phones of businesses as well as individuals,” per the opinion. Every contractor there had statutory standing under § 227(b), whatever happened to the residential question. The court also held the contractors had Article III standing. Our post on TCPA standing for a single text or call covers that issue generally.

The autodialer half of § 227(b) is narrow. An “automatic telephone dialing system,” or autodialer, must have “the capacity to use a random or sequential number generator to either store or produce phone numbers to be called,” as the Supreme Court held in Facebook, Inc. v. Duguid, 592 U.S. 395 (2021). Many platforms that text a stored list don’t do that, though footnote 7 of Duguid noted that “an autodialer might use a random number generator to determine the order in which to pick phone numbers from a preproduced list.” I’d test that point early in any autodialer case. The prerecorded-voice half has no such limit, and the Ninth Circuit’s ruling on video texts and the prerecorded-voice rule turned on how the recipient reached the recorded audio. Our post on autodialer defenses after Duguid covers that argument in more detail.

Business landlines are different. The landline prerecorded-voice ban reaches only “any residential telephone line,” under § 227(b)(1)(B), so a recorded message to a true office landline usually falls outside it. Faxes are a separate rule with no residential limit. Our post on prerecorded calls to home landlines covers the exemptions and call limits for residential lines.

How the claim theories line up for business numbers

The damages figures come from § 227(b)(3) and § 227(c)(5). The Do Not Call claim is “up to $500,” while the § 227(b) claim sets $500 per violation, and under both the plaintiff can recover actual monetary loss instead if it’s greater. A stop request also matters outside the Do Not Call rules. If the calls were autodialed or prerecorded and went to a cell phone, a stop request can revoke consent under § 227(b), where business use doesn’t matter.

What evidence decides whether a number is a business line?

Chennette lists the factors: “(1) how plaintiffs hold their phone numbers out to the public; (2) whether plaintiffs’ phones are registered with the telephone company as residential or business lines; (3) how much plaintiffs use their phones for business or employment; (4) who pays for the phone bills; and (5) other factors bearing on how a reasonable observer would view the phone line,” per the opinion.

In practice that sorts into two piles. One is billing: the carrier account type, whether a business pays or reimburses the bill, and whether the line sits on a family plan. That evidence can come from the plaintiff and, by subpoena, the carrier. The other is how the number is listed and used, from websites and Yelp profiles to contractor license listings and the plaintiff’s own call history.

I’d tell any company to capture the plaintiff’s public listings the day a demand letter arrives, with dates, and to pull archived copies of older versions. Listings can change once a lawsuit starts, and a screenshot from the week of the calls is worth more than a deposition answer a year later.

Residential status also comes up at class certification. In Mattson v. New Penn Financial, LLC, an unpublished 2023 memorandum, the district court had found Rule 23(a) unmet because individual questions about whether the named plaintiff was a residential subscriber would predominate. The Ninth Circuit vacated without deciding the issue and remanded with instructions “to consider our holding in Chennette.” I’d still argue that the Chennette factors are individual by nature, but in the Ninth Circuit that argument has to be built on the presumption, not around it.

What B2B calling and texting practices hold up?

If I were setting up a B2B program, I’d treat every cell phone on the list as a consumer number until the facts say otherwise.

Don’t treat a public business listing as consent. In Chennette, the contractors posted their cell numbers on Yelp and Facebook, and the court said “They did not expressly consent to receive text messages from GoSmith,” per the opinion. A scraped number can still support a § 227(b) claim.

Scrub B2B lists against the Do Not Call Registry anyway when a number is a cell phone or belongs to a sole proprietor. The cost is small next to a mixed-use dispute. Keep a record of where each business number came from and when you classified it, so the file shows what a reasonable observer would have seen at the time.

Keep live-agent outreach separate from automated outreach. If a campaign uses prerecorded or AI-generated voice, or a dialer that might qualify as an autodialer, get consent for those numbers, because business use won’t help under § 227(b). If consent comes through a lead vendor, the FCC’s one-to-one consent rule never took effect, but the consent still has to reach calls from your company. Predictive dialers also have to stay within the FCC’s limit on abandoned sales calls, covered in our post on the 3% abandoned-call rule.

Honor stop requests on every list. And don’t count on the FTC’s business-to-business exemption. The Telemarketing Sales Rule exempts “Telephone calls between a telemarketer and any business to induce the purchase of goods or services,” with exceptions, under 16 C.F.R. § 310.6(b)(7). That’s the FTC’s rule. It doesn’t decide who counts as a residential subscriber under the TCPA, and it does nothing for a § 227(b) claim. Our post on the Telemarketing Sales Rule and the TCPA covers how the two rules fit together.

What to do when a business-number claim arrives

1. Put a litigation hold on call and text logs, dialer and platform data, and the consent records for the numbers involved, along with captures of the plaintiff’s public business listings.
2. Pull your internal do-not-call and opt-out logs, with the date each request came in and when it was processed.
3. Pull the Do Not Call Registry scrub records for the campaign and the registry version dates you used.
4. Gather vendor and lead-source contracts and call scripts, along with any recorded or AI-voice message files.
5. Talk to a lawyer before you answer a demand letter, contact the claimant, or offer anything to settle.

The firm’s page on TCPA litigation defense explains how claims involving calls and texts to business and mixed-use phone numbers move from a demand letter to a lawsuit.

Questions about TCPA claims and business numbers

Can a sole proprietor’s cell phone be on the Do Not Call Registry?

Yes, and if it’s registered, the Ninth Circuit presumes it’s residential. The FCC declined to exempt home-based businesses in 2005, and Chennette applied the presumption to contractors who used their cell phones for work. A caller can rebut it with evidence about billing and actual use, but that usually happens after discovery, not on a motion to dismiss.

Is it legal to text a business owner’s cell phone without consent?

It depends on how the text is sent. A text from equipment that qualifies as an autodialer, or a message with an artificial or prerecorded voice, needs prior express consent under § 227(b) when it is sent to a cell phone, whatever the phone is used for. A manually sent marketing text isn’t an autodialer claim, but it can still support a Do Not Call claim if the phone is registered and residential. Consent and list scrubbing cost less than litigating either question.

Who has to prove whether the phone is residential?

In the Ninth Circuit a registered cell phone starts out presumed residential, and the defendant can rebut that presumption. The plaintiff still has to plead and prove residential-subscriber status, and the FCC said in its 2003 order that the presumption “may require a complaining wireless subscriber to provide further proof of the validity of that presumption.” That’s why I’d start gathering business-use evidence the week the case arrives. The FCC’s 2003 presumption addresses wireless subscribers, and Chennette itself noted a few district courts elsewhere that treated any business use as disqualifying, so the forum can change the analysis.

If your company is being sued over calls to a business number

If a plaintiff says your calls or texts reached a residential phone and you believe it was a business line, the billing records and the plaintiff’s public listings can decide the case. Rosenberger + Kawabata represents businesses defending TCPA lawsuits and class actions through its business litigation practice, including claims involving calls and texts to business and mixed-use phone 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, as published in the eCFR on February 18, 2026. The FTC’s business-to-business exemption is at 16 C.F.R. § 310.6. The FCC orders are the 2003 TCPA Order, FCC 03-153, 18 FCC Rcd. 14014 (2003), and the Second Order on Reconsideration, FCC 05-28, 20 FCC Rcd. 3788 (2005).

The court decisions are Chennette v. Porch.com, Inc., 50 F.4th 1217 (9th Cir. 2022); Barton v. Leadpoint, Inc., No. 22-35130 (9th Cir. July 20, 2023) (unpublished); Mattson v. New Penn Financial, LLC, No. 21-35795 (9th Cir. Mar. 23, 2023) (unpublished); Lyman v. QuinStreet, Inc., No. 23-cv-05056-PCP (N.D. Cal. July 12, 2024); Facebook, Inc. v. Duguid, 592 U.S. 395 (2021); Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, 603 U.S. 369 (2024); and McLaughlin Chiropractic Associates v. McKesson Corp., 606 U.S. 146 (2025).

This post is general information about the Telephone Consumer Protection Act and related laws as of February 18, 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.