President Trump’s Re-Election Committee Hit with TCPA Class Action Over Alleged Unsolicited Text Messages

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President Donald Trump’s re-election committee has been named in a proposed class action lawsuit filed by three consumers who allege they received unsolicited text messages from defendant Donald J. Trump for President, Inc. without providing prior express written consent to be contacted. 

According to the 19-page lawsuit, the Trump For President campaign committee “routinely” sends text messages to consumers’ phones by way of automatic telephone dialing equipment without first securing express consent to do so. Filed in Minnesota district court, the complaint alleges violations of the federal Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), which “strictly forbids spam text messages exactly like those alleged” by the plaintiffs.

Two of the three Minnesota residents who filed the complaint say they received text messages from the defendant that contained information on an October 10 campaign rally in Minneapolis. According to the suit, the texts included a link that directed recipients to the President’s campaign website on which consumers could claim tickets. One named plaintiff claims to have received a text message urging him to let his local representative know that “you stand with President Trump,” followed by a telephone number. 

The plaintiffs stress in the lawsuit that they have no affiliation with President Trump’s re-election campaign and are registered Democrats who “have never provided any donations to Donald J. Trump or attended any previous campaign rally” for the defendant. In the lawsuit’s estimation, the allegedly unsolicited texts were generated through “peer-to-peer” text messaging, or an automated telephone dialing system that sends text messages to lists of recipients uploaded by a particular entity.

Classes proposed for certification by the lawsuit include a “long code text message class,” who are alleged to have received a text message placed from a 10-digit phone number, and a “short code text message class” alleged to have received texts from short code 88022.