Opinion ID: 6348790
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Prohibitions

Text: It shall be unlawful for any person within the United States, or any person outside the United States if the recipient is within the United States— (A) to make any call (other than a call made for emergency purposes or made with the prior express consent of the called party) using any automatic telephone dialing system or an artificial or prerecorded voice— ... (iii) to any telephone number assigned to a paging service, cellular telephone service, specialized mobile radio service, or other radio common carrier service, or any service for which the called party is charged for the call, . . . 10 MOSKOWITZ V. AMERICAN SAVINGS BANK re Rules & Regulations Implementing the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991, 7 F.C.C. Rcd. 8752, 8769 (Oct. 16, 1992). Moskowitz argues that we have, and the Van Patten court had, discretion to refuse to employ the FCC’s order interpreting “prior express consent.” But Van Patten is a published opinion and binding precedent. See Miller v. Gammie, 335 F.3d 889, 900 (9th Cir. 2003) (en banc) (holding a published opinion may be overruled by a threejudge panel only when it is clearly irreconcilable with an intervening higher authority). Further, Van Patten’s reasoning—that providing a telephone number to a business as part of telephone communication to that business constitutes express consent to a responsive contact from that business within the scope of that communication—is even more directly applicable to the facts of this case than were the facts of Van Patten. 847 F.3d at 1046 (explaining that “the transactional context matters in determining the scope of a consumer’s consent to contact”). In that case, Van Patten’s former gym contacted him offering to reactivate his membership after he had cancelled the membership, but he had not revoked his prior express consent for the gym to contact him about his membership. Id. at 1046–47. In this case, unlike Van Patten, it was Moskowitz who initiated contact with ASB, and ASB that automatically replied to each contact with a single responsive text message to confirm receipt and provide information that the short code was ASB’s and how to stop or continue communication. By sending text messages to ASB’s short code, Moskowitz expressly consented to receive reply text messages. Each informative and confirmatory reply text message from ASB falls within the scope of Moskowitz’s text message initiating contact, and MOSKOWITZ V. AMERICAN SAVINGS BANK 11 therefore, “the scope of [Moskowitz’s] consent to contact.” Id. at 1046. Thus, the district court did not err in applying Van Patten and finding for ASB, and we affirm the grant of summary judgment for ASB.