A large share of the matters LAC handles involve calls and texts to Florida numbers. That is not an accident. Florida has the most active state telemarketing statute in the United States, and a call that breaches the federal Act will often breach the Florida one as well.
Two statutes, one call
The Telephone Consumer Protection Act is federal law and applies to every call made to a US number. The Florida Telephone Solicitation Act, Fla. Stat. § 501.059, applies to calls made to Florida residents, wherever the caller is. The two statutes overlap but are not identical, and a business that complies with one has not necessarily complied with the other. Claims under both are commonly brought together for the same call.
What Florida adds
- Shorter hours. Federal rules allow telephone solicitations between 8 a.m. and 9 p.m. in the recipient’s time zone. Florida stops at 8 p.m. The recipient’s clock governs, so a dialer running on Pacific time that reaches a Miami number at 8:30 p.m. Eastern is outside the window.
- A three-call cap. Florida prohibits more than three commercial telephone solicitation calls from any number to a person over a 24-hour period on the same subject matter. Federal law has no equivalent.
- Written consent for automated calls. A sales call or text made using an automated system for the selection or dialing of numbers, or playing a recorded message, requires the recipient’s prior express written consent. The 2023 amendment narrowed the definition to systems that both select and dial, but recorded-voice calls remain covered.
- Its own damages. $500 per violation, which a court may raise to $1,500 for willful or knowing violations. Where a call breaches both the Florida statute and the federal Act, each carries its own statutory damages.
- A cure period for texts. Since 2023, a text-message claim under the Florida statute requires that the recipient replied STOP and that the sender continued for fifteen days. Federal law has no such requirement: every text after a STOP is sent without consent.
Why it matters to a business outside Florida
The statute reaches the call, not the caller. A business in Texas, Ohio or California that dials Florida area codes is subject to it. Lead lists are rarely sorted by state before dialing, and a national campaign of a few thousand calls will almost always include Florida numbers. Each one is reviewed against both statutes.
What to check
- Whether your dialer enforces an 8 p.m. cut-off by the recipient’s time zone, not the caller’s.
- Whether it caps attempts per number per 24 hours, and at what figure.
- Whether your consent records for Florida numbers are written, signed and specific to the number called.
- Whether STOP replies are honoured on the first message, across every platform you use.
The Florida statute, the federal Act and the FCC’s rules are collected under Authorities. Businesses that have received a demand should start with I received a letter. Now what?