Fourth Circuit Upholds Denial of Class Certification in TCPA Case

If you’ve ever received a robocall that starts talking before you can even say “hello,” you already understand why the
Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) exists. If you’ve ever received a fax in the year of our Lord 2026, you also
understand why humanity needs both therapy and better hobbies.

But here’s the thing about TCPA lawsuits: even when a plaintiff has a strong individual claim, turning that claim into a
class action is a whole different sport. In a recent decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit affirmed a
district court’s denial of class certification in a TCPA casereinforcing a message the court has been sending for years:
you don’t get a class just because the statute offers big, per-violation damages. You get a class when you can actually
define and identify it without turning the case into thousands of mini-trials.

Let’s break down what happened, why the Fourth Circuit wasn’t convinced, and what businesses (and plaintiffs) can learn if
they’d like to spend fewer afternoons reading call logs that look like they were generated by a bored algorithm with a
grudge.

Quick Refresher: What the TCPA Regulates (and Why People Sue Over It)

Robocalls and prerecorded messages

The TCPA restricts certain automated calls and calls using an artificial or prerecorded voice to cell phones without the
called party’s prior express consent. The law is designed to curb abusive calling practices and protect consumer privacy,
and it carries statutory damages that can stack up quickly when the alleged conduct happens at scale.

Junk faxes (yes, still)

The TCPA also restricts unsolicited advertisements sent to a “telephone facsimile machine.” Fax cases may sound like
internet archaeology, but they matter because class actions in fax litigation often hinge on the same pressure point as
robocall cases: can you identify who’s actually in the class and whether they were covered by the statute?

One more key point: TCPA claims are often described as “strict liability” style claims in practicemeaning plaintiffs don’t
need to prove a complicated intent story to get traction. That simplicity is exactly why courts scrutinize class
certification: if damages can snowball, the class definition and proof methods must be disciplined.

Class Certification 101: Rule 23 Is the Bouncer at the Door

Class actions in federal court have to satisfy Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23. In normal-person terms: you need enough
people (numerosity), shared issues (commonality), a representative who matches the group (typicality), and adequate
representation (adequacy). Thenif you’re seeking damages for a big groupyou typically need Rule 23(b)(3), which requires
that common questions predominate and that a class action is superior to individual cases.

Courts don’t rubber-stamp this. They do a “rigorous analysis,” and plaintiffs have to prove (with evidence) that the rule’s
requirements are actually met. If your plan for identifying class members involves guesswork, unreliable assumptions, or
“we’ll figure it out later,” you’re going to have a bad time.

The Fourth Circuit Decision at a Glance: The Problem Wasn’t the TCPAIt Was the Class

In the case the Fourth Circuit reviewed, the named plaintiff received multiple prerecorded messages on his cell phone from a
bank attempting to collect a debt. He said he was not the bank’s customer and never consented to be called. The twist:
his cell phone number had previously belonged to someone elsesomeone who was a customer and had provided consent
before the number was reassigned.

The plaintiff brought a TCPA claim for the prerecorded calls and tried to certify a class of people who, like him, were
not current customers but nonetheless received prerecorded calls. The district court denied certification, and the Fourth
Circuit affirmed.

Why reassigned numbers turn “simple” into “individualized”

Reassigned number cases are a perfect stress test for class actions. On paper, the theory is clean:
“You called people who didn’t consent.” In reality, the litigation immediately runs into messy questions:

• Which calls went to cell phones (as opposed to landlines or business lines)?
• Which numbers were reassigned, and when?
• Did the caller have consent from the prior subscriber, and did that consent matter for the calls at issue?
• Who was the subscriber at the time each call was made?
• How many “non-customer” numbers are you identifying incorrectly (false positives)?

Those questions aren’t just background noise. They go directly to whether you can identify class members and whether the
case can be tried with common proof.

The expert problem: methodology can’t be “concept art”

The plaintiff’s motion for class certification leaned heavily on expert testimony offering a method to identify class
members. But the district court excluded the expert under Rule 702 (the expert evidence rule) and the familiar Daubert
reliability framework. Without that expert testimony, the class plan lost its engine.

The expert proposed a four-step approach that included analyzing the defendant’s call records, using the FCC’s
Reassigned Numbers Database (RND) to identify disconnected numbers, relying on third-party broker tools to query the RND,
and then using “historical reverse append” plus subpoenas to figure out who owned specific numbers at specific times.

The Fourth Circuit agreed the district court acted within its discretion in rejecting that testimony as unreliable,
emphasizing problems like incomplete implementation and real-world failure rates. In testing, a large portion of the numbers
flagged as potential class members appeared to belong to actual customersexactly the kind of error that can inflate a class
with people who don’t fit the definition.

A detail with big implications: the RND’s record coverage is limited (it only goes back so far), which means the tool can’t
reliably solve reassignment questions for calls that occurred outside the database’s historical window. That gap matters
because a class method that only works for a slice of the relevant time period may not be administratively feasible for the
case being litigated.

Ascertainability: the Fourth Circuit’s “show me the roster” rule

The Fourth Circuit has an “implicit” ascertainability requirement: a class must be defined by objective criteria, and
members must be “readily identifiable” without extensive individualized fact-finding or mini-trials. If you can’t tell who
is in the class without chasing down individualized proof for each person, certification is in trouble.

In this case, the district court concluded the plaintiff couldn’t show that class members could be identified in an
administratively feasible wayespecially after the expert methodology was excluded. The Fourth Circuit affirmed that
conclusion, noting the risk that the proposed identification approach would sweep in many actual customers (i.e., people who
weren’t supposed to be in the class at all).

Predominance: when common issues lose the vote

Rule 23(b)(3) predominance asks whether the case can be proven primarily with common evidenceor whether the key questions
are individual. Reassigned-number cases often trigger individualized issues, including consent, subscriber identity at
specific times, and whether the call was actually placed to the person you think it was.

The court didn’t say TCPA claims can never be certified. It said this proposal didn’t meet the standard, given the
evidentiary record and the reliability problems in the identification plan.

A Second Fourth Circuit Example: Fax Litigation and the Same Core Roadblock

If you want to see the same logic in a different costume, look at the Fourth Circuit’s decision in a junk fax case involving
a staffing company that received an unsolicited advertisement and sought to certify a class of tens of thousands of fax
recipients.

The district court denied class certification on ascertainability grounds, and the Fourth Circuit affirmed. Why?
Because not all recipients were situated the same way under the statute: the court concluded the TCPA’s fax prohibition
covers unsolicited ads sent to stand-alone fax machines, but not those received through online fax services. That meant class
membership had to be limited to stand-alone fax usersand the plaintiff couldn’t reliably identify who those users were.

The plaintiff tried using subpoenas to carriers to determine whether a given fax number was associated with an online fax
service. The defense countered with evidence that a recipient might be using an online fax service provided by someone else,
even if the subpoenaed carrier didn’t provide that service. The district court concluded this uncertainty would force
individualized inquiries recipient-by-recipient. The Fourth Circuit agreed: if the court must run mini-trials to confirm who
qualifies, the class isn’t ascertainable.

There’s also a compliance lesson buried in the opinion: even while denying class certification, the court affirmed summary
judgment for the plaintiff on the individual fax claimreinforcing that companies can still face liability even when a class
can’t be formed.

What This Means in Practice: The Fourth Circuit’s TCPA Class Action Playbook

1) Your class definition must match the statute, not your vibes

If the statute covers only certain recipients (e.g., stand-alone fax machines) or only certain call recipients (e.g., the
“called party” without consent), the class definition has to line up with that boundary. A class that includes people who
may not be covered is more likely to trigger ascertainability and predominance problems.

2) Data matters more than indignation

Courts aren’t allergic to large casesthey’re allergic to large cases built on shaky identification methods. If your plan is
“we’ll subpoena everyone and sort it out later,” a judge may hear “we will litigate 20,000 tiny cases inside one big case.”
That’s exactly what Rule 23 is supposed to prevent.

3) Experts must do the work, not just describe the work

A class plan that depends on expert proof must survive Rule 702 scrutiny. That means testing, completeness, and
transparency. If the methodology isn’t fully implemented or produces error rates that would flood the class with
misidentified members, courts can (and do) treat the plan as unreliable.

4) Reassigned numbers are a predictable certification minefield

If the key question is “who had the number at the time,” you need an administratively feasible way to answer it. Tools like
the RND can help, but limitations in scope and coverage can undercut a class planespecially when the calls occurred before
the database’s historical window or when the plan requires multiple layers of third-party data matching.

Concrete Examples: What a More “Certifiable” TCPA Class Might Look Like

Every case is fact-specific, but the Fourth Circuit’s message suggests that narrower, data-anchored class definitions have a
better shot than broad, aspirational ones. For example:

Example A: A reassigned-number robocall class (narrowed)

• Calls occurred within a time period where a reliable reassigned-number dataset has coverage.
• Numbers were flagged as reassigned based on a consistent, tested process with documented error rates.
• Class membership requires objective indicators beyond “not currently a customer,” such as carrier-confirmed subscriber
  data or verified ownership records.

Example B: A fax class limited to covered recipients

• Class definition excludes online fax services by objective criteria that can be applied uniformly.
• Recipient type can be confirmed through records that don’t require individualized testimony from each recipient.
• Any gray-area recipient categories are carved out rather than “handled later.”

These aren’t magic formulasthey’re illustrations of a principle: class definitions should be built around proof that can be
scaled without collapsing into individual investigations.

500-Word Experiences: Lessons People Learn the Hard Way in TCPA Class Certification Fights

People who work on TCPA caseswhether they’re in-house counsel, compliance teams, outside litigators, or the unlucky person
who owns “the dialer spreadsheet”tend to collect the same set of battle stories. Not because they’re dramatic (though they
can be), but because TCPA class certification turns on a handful of repeatable, deeply human problems: messy data, messy
identities, and messy technology.

One of the most common experiences is discovering that “consent” isn’t a single yes-or-no switch. It’s a timeline. Someone
may have consented years ago, then changed numbers, then told a customer service rep to stop calling, then switched carriers,
then got added to a new campaign because the CRM imported an old list called something like
Leads_2019_FINAL_v7_REALLYFINAL.xlsx. (If you’ve never seen that file name, congratulations on your peaceful
life.)

Reassigned numbers are where that timeline becomes a legal trapdoor. Teams often assume they can “just check the carrier”
and move on. In reality, subscriber identity can be hard to reconstruct, especially at scale and especially over time. Family
plans, business lines, VoIP services, prepaid phones, and numbers registered under nicknames (or not registered cleanly at
all) add layers of ambiguity. In the Fourth Circuit’s bank-call scenario, that ambiguity wasn’t just annoyingit was the
reason class certification failed. If you can’t confidently separate “non-customer called without consent” from “actual
customer, wrong assumption,” you’re not just risking a few mistakes. You’re risking a class definition that can’t be
administered fairly.

Another common experience is that third-party data is both a lifeline and a liability. Reverse-append tools, data brokers,
and reassigned-number datasets can help identify potential class membersbut they come with coverage gaps, false positives,
and black-box assumptions. When an expert testifies that a multi-step process will identify class members, courts want to
see it actually run, tested, and validated, with error rates that don’t turn the class into a guessing game. Practitioners
often learn (painfully) that a “methodology” described in a report is not the same thing as a methodology that reliably
works in the real world.

On the defense side, companies frequently learn that the best TCPA litigation strategy starts monthsor yearsbefore any
lawsuit, in the form of boring, unglamorous recordkeeping. Clean consent capture, clear opt-out handling, vendor oversight,
and dialer logs that can be explained without interpretive dance are what separate “manageable case” from “why is this
happening to us.” In fax cases, the same lesson shows up differently: the compliance issue may be vendor-driven, but the
liability risk can still land on the advertiser if the facts support “sender” responsibility.

The shared takeaway from these experiences is surprisingly simple: TCPA class actions rise and fall on whether you can
identify who was affected, when, and whyusing proof that scales. The Fourth Circuit’s decisions aren’t anti-consumer or
anti-business. They’re a reminder that the class action device has guardrails. If your proof plan requires thousands of
individualized investigations, the court is going to treat that as a signnot of strengthbut of mismatch.

Conclusion

The Fourth Circuit’s affirmation of a denial of class certification in a TCPA case underscores a practical reality:
class actions don’t run on outrage; they run on administrable definitions and reliable proof. If identifying class members
requires individualized diggingespecially when reassigned numbers, consent histories, or technology boundaries are at the
centercourts in this circuit are likely to see predominance and ascertainability problems.

For plaintiffs, the lesson is to build tighter classes with tested identification methods. For businesses, the lesson is to
treat TCPA compliance like a data problem as much as a legal problem: document consent, track revocations, watch reassigned
number risk, and vet vendors. Because in TCPA litigation, the calls you don’t make are nicebut the records you do keep are
priceless.