TCPA And VoIP: Revisiting The 4th Circ.'s Ruling In Monarch

In its short, unpublished opinion in Lynn v. Monarch Recovery Management Inc., the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit stated that the “call-charged provision” of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act applied to debt collection calls made to a residential Voice over Internet Protocol-based line. The plaintiffs bar responded by suggesting that the TCPA applies differently to so-called “VoIP calls,” and telemarketing vendors responded by marketing services that scrub all numbers assigned to VoIP carriers — a move that, given VoIP's increasing popularity, could end up eliminating a substantial percentage of residential numbers. However, a more objective analysis of the opinion and the issues suggests that these reactions may be overstated, if not altogether misplaced.