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As of now, the FCC’s Order that was to go effective on January 27, 2025 – the one-to-one rule and the “logically and topically related” rule – has been vacated by a panel of judges on the Eleventh Circuit in the Insurance Marketing Coalition case – its cancelled. It’s possible the FCC could ask for the entire Eleventh Circuit to review the panel’s decision. It’s also possible that the FCC could appeal the decision to the Supreme Court. Right before the Court’s decision, the FCC itself attempted to delay implementation to the earlier of January 26, 2026 or a date specified in a new Public Notice – but the Eleventh Circuit essentially overruled that.
No one knows what the FCC will do just yet, but we don’t expect them to keep pushing this issue. Where we disagree with a lot of the chatter coming into the industry from so-called “experts,” however, is what this actually means in the real world. The fact of the matter that the first Trump administration did nothing at all to impact telemarketing regulations. We also know that everybody essentially hates telemarketing, and that the telemarketing industry has really caused all of these problems to occur in the first place (we’ve been defending class actions for over a decade where the plaintiff argues that the call they received from the home improvement contractor had no bearing whatsoever to the lead information they entered into a completely unrelated aggregator webpage – this FCC Order was really just legislation resulting from litigation that has been playing out in the courts for years due to overzealous lead aggregators).
What is a fairly safe bet, given historical precedent, is that you’re going to see the more progressive states now step into the void left by the FCC and the Eleventh Circuit – they’re going to start passing their own one-to-one consent rules. It happened with lead paint, it happened with the Do Not Call registries, and it’s going to happen here as well. All of which suggests that any home improvement contractor that’s relatively high on the liability radar screen should still be very careful about abusing aggregator leads.
Thanks as always for the timely and informative update. This is great news for the companies that use lead aggregators but follow the rules. Hopefully the Progressive states can at least just once not make things worse. I know wishful thinking!