TCPA Personal Jurisdiction and Nationwide Class Actions

Since June 2017, out-of-state companies facing nationwide TCPA class actions have asked whether the court can decide claims about calls that never went into its state. For the named plaintiff’s calls, usually yes, if the company aimed them there. For the rest of the class, it’s unsettled. At least two appeals courts say the Supreme Court’s 2017 limit doesn’t reach class actions, and California’s circuit hasn’t decided. A company sued far from home may have more jurisdictional defenses than the complaint suggests.

When can a TCPA plaintiff sue an out-of-state company at home?

When the company is at home there, or when the calls in the lawsuit were directed into that state.

Courts recognize two kinds of personal jurisdiction (a court’s power over a particular defendant). General jurisdiction lets a court hear any claim against a company, but only where the company is “essentially at home,” which for a corporation usually means its state of incorporation and its principal place of business, as the Supreme Court explained in Ford Motor Co. v. Montana Eighth Judicial District Court. Specific jurisdiction is narrower. The company must reach into the state on purpose, and the plaintiff’s claims “must arise out of or relate to the defendant’s contacts” with it.

Ford held that a strict causal connection isn’t always required. Jurisdiction was proper there because Ford “had systematically served a market in Montana and Minnesota for the very vehicles that the plaintiffs allege malfunctioned and injured them in those States.” It added a limit in the same breath: “That does not mean anything goes.”

For a TCPA defendant, the contact is often the call or text itself. Calls deliberately aimed at California numbers look like contacts with California, so the defense usually depends on who placed them and for whom. Size doesn’t help, either. In Briskin v. Shopify, the en banc Ninth Circuit overruled its own precedent requiring a company to single out the forum state, reasoning that “requiring differential targeting would have the perverse effect of allowing a corporation to direct its activities toward all 50 states yet to escape specific personal jurisdiction in each of those states.” Briskin involved an e-commerce platform, not phone calls. Still, I’d put more weight on the facts of who dialed than on the argument that a national calling program targets no state in particular.

I think the better questions are factual: who placed the calls, and for whom? If a lead vendor dialed, the company’s contacts with the state may depend on whether the vendor acted as its agent. The Ninth Circuit noted the alleged agents’ contacts, in the class-certification setting, in Moser (discussed below). Owners and officers sued personally get their own analysis, which our post on personal TCPA liability for owners and officers covers.

Why does the TCPA’s silence on service of process matter?

Because it means a federal court hearing a private TCPA suit generally has no more reach than the state courts where it sits.

The private-suit provisions let a person sue “if otherwise permitted by the laws or rules of court of a State,” in “an appropriate court of that State,” under 47 U.S.C. § 227(b)(3) and (c)(5). They say nothing about serving process nationwide. Congress knew how to write that provision. In suits brought by state attorneys general, § 227(g)(4) says “process in such cases may be served in any district in which the defendant is an inhabitant or where the defendant may be found.”

Without a statute like that, Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 4(k)(1)(A) ties a federal court’s reach to the reach of the state’s own courts. The Ninth Circuit spelled out the consequence in Harrington v. Cracker Barrel Old Country Store, a wage case: “If the FLSA provided for nationwide service of process, we would undertake a national contacts analysis and concern ourselves only with the due process limits of the Fifth Amendment.” The FLSA has no such provision, so the court applied state-law limits. The private TCPA provisions don’t have one either. That’s the starting point for most jurisdiction arguments a domestic out-of-state TCPA defendant makes in federal court. Foreign companies can face a separate federal long-arm rule, Rule 4(k)(2), which the Sixth Circuit applied to a Swiss parent company in the Lyngaas case discussed below.

Does Bristol-Myers Squibb limit nationwide TCPA classes?

Outside the Ninth Circuit, at least two appeals courts have said no. Inside it, the question is open.

Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. v. Superior Court was a mass action in California state court. Hundreds of plaintiffs from other states sued over a drug they didn’t buy or take in California. The Supreme Court held that California courts couldn’t hear those nonresidents’ claims, because specific jurisdiction requires “a connection between the forum and the specific claims at issue.” Justice Sotomayor’s dissent noted what the majority left alone: “The Court today does not confront the question whether its opinion here would also apply to a class action in which a plaintiff injured in the forum State seeks to represent a nationwide class of plaintiffs, not all of whom were injured there.”

Two TCPA fax cases answered that question for their circuits. In Mussat v. IQVIA, the Seventh Circuit held in 2020 that Bristol-Myers doesn’t govern a nationwide class action in federal court under a federal statute, explaining that “the named representatives must be able to demonstrate either general or specific personal jurisdiction, but the unnamed class members are not required to do so.” The Sixth Circuit agreed in Lyngaas v. Curaden AG, stating: “We follow their lead in holding that Bristol-Myers Squibb does not extend to federal class actions.” Judge Thapar disagreed with that part of the decision.

The Ninth Circuit, which covers California, hasn’t ruled. When it applied Bristol-Myers to wage-and-hour collective actions in Harrington, it noted that “we have not yet considered the application of Bristol-Myers in a class action,” and it treated collective actions differently because each opt-in worker is an individual party. The Second Circuit reached the same result for collective actions in Provencher v. Bimbo Foods Bakeries Distribution in May 2026, and it expressly left the class-action question undecided.

Here’s where that leaves a defendant. The Seventh and Sixth Circuits rejected the defense for Rule 23 classes, the Second Circuit has listed the Third Circuit with them, and the Ninth and Second Circuits took care to distinguish classes when they applied Bristol-Myers to collective actions. Still, I’d raise the objection in every nationwide TCPA class filed in a California federal court against a company that isn’t at home here. Nothing binding in the Ninth Circuit forecloses it. Harrington’s Rule 4(k) reasoning, which Judge Thapar applied to a TCPA class in his partial dissent in Lyngaas, gives it a respectable basis, though the Seventh Circuit rejected a Rule 4(k) argument for absent class members in Mussat.

When does an out-of-state company have to raise the defense?

For the named plaintiff’s claims, in the company’s first response. For absent class members, at class certification, and the company should preserve it earlier anyway.

Personal jurisdiction is one of the defenses that can be lost. Under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(h)(1), a party waives it by “omitting it from a motion in the circumstances described in Rule 12(g)(2),” or by leaving it out of both a Rule 12 motion and the answer. Rule 12(g)(2) bars a second motion raising a defense “that was available to the party but omitted from its earlier motion.” A company that files a motion to dismiss on the merits and forgets jurisdiction over the named plaintiff’s claims has likely given it up.

Absent class members are treated differently, because they aren’t parties yet. In Moser v. Benefytt, according to the opinion, a California resident sued a Delaware company (then called Health Insurance Innovations, or HII) whose principal place of business, it represented, was in Florida, alleging it was responsible for unwanted sales calls, and sought nationwide classes. The district court found the company had waived its Bristol-Myers objection by leaving it out of its motion to dismiss. The Ninth Circuit vacated class certification in 2021, holding that the objection wasn’t “available” at the pleading stage: “HII could not have moved to dismiss on personal jurisdiction grounds the claims of putative class members who were not then before the court, nor was HII required to seek dismissal of hypothetical future plaintiffs.” According to Moser, the Fifth and D.C. Circuits had reached the same conclusion.

The Fifth Circuit’s decision in Cruson v. Jackson National Life Insurance Co. also shows what careful preservation looks like. The defendant there “raised the defense in its answer and in its opposition to class certification,” and the court rejected the argument that it had delayed too long. On when the defense became available, the court said: “Certification did.” Consent is the other common argument at that stage, covered in our post on using consent to defeat class certification.

Moser didn’t decide whether Bristol-Myers applies to classes. It sent that question back, noting that the trial court could decide “whether consideration of the Bristol-Myers argument will require additional record development, including as to HII’s and its alleged agents’ contacts with California.” I read that as a warning to defendants. The objection is only as good as the record behind it, starting with which calls went to which states.

Does registering to do business in a state count as consent to be sued there?

In Pennsylvania, the Supreme Court rejected a due process objection to that rule, and a Commerce Clause challenge was still being fought as of this post. Elsewhere, it depends on the state’s statute.

In Mallory v. Norfolk Southern Railway Co., decided in 2023, the Supreme Court rejected a due process challenge to Pennsylvania’s law requiring registered out-of-state companies to agree to appear in its courts on “any cause of action” against them. The Court held that due process didn’t bar Pennsylvania from hearing a claim against a registered railroad over injuries that happened elsewhere, and it sent the case back. The majority said the Pennsylvania statute and the facts fell squarely within a 1917 precedent. It declined to decide whether any other state’s scheme would work the same way, and it left the railroad’s dormant Commerce Clause argument for the remand.

Justice Alito’s concurrence in Mallory pointed to the next fight: “While that is the end of the case before us, it is not the end of the story for registration-based jurisdiction.” He suggested that the dormant Commerce Clause could limit laws like Pennsylvania’s. According to Norfolk Southern’s April 2026 petition to the Supreme Court, the Pennsylvania courts rejected its Commerce Clause arguments on remand, and the railroad asked the Court to take up the question. That petition was pending as of the date of this post.

For a calling business, this matters in one situation. If a TCPA plaintiff files in a state where the company is registered and that state’s statute makes registration consent to general jurisdiction, the Bristol-Myers argument may not matter there, because every claim is in. Before I rely on a jurisdiction defense, I read the forum state’s registration statute, not just the case law.

How the jurisdiction theories compare

Before answering a nationwide TCPA class complaint

1. Put a litigation hold on call and text logs, dialer and platform data, and the consent records for every number in the complaint and the proposed class.
2. Pull the internal do-not-call and opt-out logs with dates, so you can see which requests came from which states.
3. Pull the National Do Not Call Registry scrub records and the registry version dates used for each campaign.
4. Gather vendor and lead-source contracts along with scripts and any recorded or AI-voice message files, then map which vendor dialed which states.
5. Talk to a lawyer before filing anything or discussing settlement, because the first Rule 12 motion or answer can waive the jurisdiction defense to the named plaintiff’s claims.

The firm’s California TCPA defense lawyers page explains how it approaches claims involving nationwide classes filed against out-of-state callers.

Questions out-of-state companies ask about TCPA jurisdiction

Can a company be sued in California over calls to California numbers if it has no office here?

It can happen. Specific jurisdiction doesn’t require an office. It requires contacts the company chose to make with the state and claims tied to those contacts. Calls or texts deliberately directed to California residents can supply both. The defense usually depends on the facts: whether the company or an independent vendor placed the calls, and whether the vendor was acting as the company’s agent when it did.

Does a nationwide TCPA class have to be filed in our home state?

Not under the Seventh and Sixth Circuit decisions in Mussat and Lyngaas, which let a plaintiff with jurisdiction over their own claims represent a nationwide class in federal court under a federal statute like the TCPA. The Ninth Circuit hasn’t decided the question. In California federal courts, an out-of-state defendant can still argue that Bristol-Myers limits the class to people who received calls here, and it should raise that argument at class certification.

If we skip the jurisdiction defense in our motion to dismiss, is it gone?

For the named plaintiff’s claims, very likely. Rule 12 treats the defense as waived if a company files a Rule 12 motion without it, or answers without raising it. For absent class members, the Ninth Circuit held in Moser that the defense wasn’t available at the motion-to-dismiss stage, so leaving it out of that motion didn’t waive it. I’d still plead it in the answer and raise it in the class-certification opposition.

Does Mallory mean we can be sued anywhere we’re registered?

No. Mallory rejected a due process challenge to Pennsylvania’s statute, which expressly ties registration to general jurisdiction. The Court didn’t decide whether any other state’s statute would have the same effect, and it left a Commerce Clause challenge for the remand, a challenge Justice Alito’s concurrence suggested had merit. Whether registration means consent depends on the forum state’s own law.

Facing a TCPA class action in another state’s court?

If your company has been sued in a TCPA class action far from its headquarters, where the calls went and when the jurisdiction defense is raised can shape the size of the case. Rosenberger + Kawabata represents businesses defending TCPA lawsuits and class actions through its business litigation practice, including claims involving nationwide classes filed against out-of-state callers. 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 procedural rules are Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 4 and Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12. Our related post on class periods is how the statute of limitations limits a TCPA class.

The court decisions are Ford Motor Co. v. Montana Eighth Judicial District Court, 592 U.S. 351 (2021); Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. v. Superior Court, 582 U.S. 255 (2017); Mallory v. Norfolk Southern Railway Co., 600 U.S. 122 (2023); Mussat v. IQVIA, Inc., 953 F.3d 441 (7th Cir. 2020); Lyngaas v. Curaden AG, 992 F.3d 412 (6th Cir. 2021); Cruson v. Jackson National Life Insurance Co., 954 F.3d 240 (5th Cir. 2020); Moser v. Benefytt, Inc., 8 F.4th 872 (9th Cir. 2021); Briskin v. Shopify, Inc., 135 F.4th 739 (9th Cir. 2025) (en banc); Harrington v. Cracker Barrel Old Country Store, Inc., 142 F.4th 678 (9th Cir. 2025); and Provencher v. Bimbo Foods Bakeries Distribution LLC, No. 24-3112 (2d Cir. May 4, 2026).

This post is general information about the Telephone Consumer Protection Act and related laws as of July 15, 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.