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On July 14, 2026 in Stenindingr v. Blackstone Medical Services, 2026 WL 2028517 Plaintiff sued Blackstone alleging receipt of unwanted solicitation text messages. Plaintiff alleged her number is on the National DNC registry and sued in a TCPA class action seeking up to $1,500.00 per SMS.

The question before the appeal the court was whether a party can sue for unwanted SMS messages or only for traditional voice calls. At issue is the TCPA language authorizing suit for “telephone calls” that violate the TCPA’s DNC rules by determining whether a SMS is a telephone call?

The Seventh Circuit held it is not looking at the plain meaning of the phrase– a telephone call was understood back in 1991 to mean a voice communication by phone, not an SMS communication (since SMA did not exist until the following year.)

Of note, the Court differentiated language contained in the TCPA that defines a “telephone solicitation” to include a call or message. But then noted that the private right of action does not allow suit for receipt of an unlawful solicitation– only an unlawful telephone call. The court noted that this distinction was critical in its analysis because Congress used different language in the private right of action which means Congress must have meant it intended lawsuits only for receipt of unlawful calls and not messages– like an SMS.

Most notably from this analysis the court held there is no private right of action under the TCPA’s DNC provisions; but agencies can still sue you for illegal SMS messages violating the DNC ules:

“Repeated, unwanted text messages are undoubtedly a nuisance. But they do not fall within the private right of action created by § 227(c)(5). Instead, spam messages may be curbed through agency action pursuant to other provisions of § 227, which we leave undisturbed.

The district court’s rejection of the plaintiffs’ TCPA claims was appropriate, as was its dismissal of the present suit.