The U.S. Supreme Court issued its long awaited decision in PDR Network LLC v. Carlton, addressing the issue of whether the Hobbs Act requires the district court to accept the 2006 Federal Communication Commission (FCC) Order 2006 (“the Order”), which provides the legal interpretation for the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA). Unfortunately, the Court did not answer the question presented when it granted certiorari – whether the Hobbs Act required the district court to accept the FCC’s legal interpretation of the TCPA. Instead, the Court held that the extent to which the district court must defer to the FCC depends on two preliminary issues that the Court of Appeals failed to consider: 1) whether the Order is equivalent to a “legislative rule” which has the “force and effect of law” or an “interpretative rule” which does not have the “force and effect of law”, and 2) whether the defendant had the “prior” and “adequate” opportunity to seek judicial review of the Order. As a result, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals judgment was reversed, and remanded for the Court to address these issues.

The full length article discussing the Supreme Court’s decision in PDR Network LLC v. Carlton on the Jackson Lewis P.C. website, is available here.