translate
Blog

Amendments to Pennsylvania's Telemarketer Registration Act

Today, December 3, 2019, the amendments to Pennsylvania's Telemarketer Registration Act go into effect. Act 73 of 2019 amends the 1996 Act by "further providing for definitions, for unlawful acts and penalties, for blocking of caller identification and other telemarketing screening products or services prohibited and for unwanted telephone solicitation calls prohibited".

The amendments target 4 key areas of the law:

1 - The duration of the listing on the "do-not-call" list is now permanent as long as the subscriber holds the number or "until the subscriber requests to have the telephone number removed from the list" (§ 5.2(c)). According to comments made by the bill's sponsor, Rep. Lori Mizgorski, on February 20, this matches the federal do-not-call law.

2 - Telephone solicitation calls should no longer occur on legal holidays (§ 5(a)(10)).

3 - "Robocall" is now defined (§ 2) and robocalls are now required to provide information at the beginning of the call on how to opt out of calls from that business (§ 5.2(j)(1)).

4 - "Business telephone subscriber" is now defined (§ 2) and businesses now have the ability to add their numbers to do-not-call lists. As mentioned by Rep. Frank A. Farry on February 19, this portion of the amendment was added based on requests from businesses located in the Representative's community.

These acts are found in the unofficial statutes, including Purdon's Pennsylvania Statutes and the unofficial online version from Westlaw, at 73 P.S. 2241 et seq.

A summary of this law was listed in the "Capitol Report" found in the print supplement to The Legal Intelligencer, the Pennsylvania Law Weekly, on October 15 (42 PLW 977).

More from the blog

Citators can be helpful tools for determining whether a case is “good law” or for identifying cases and other legal material that cite to a particular authority you are researching. At Jenkins, both members and patrons from the general public can use citator tools at our onsite Lexis+ stations (...
“The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a Proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free” ( CRS Report ). It was 160 years ago that enslaved people in Galveston, Texas, learned of this proclamation. On June 19, 1865, Union troops arrived in Galveston...
The Philadelphia Bar Association, amongst other national bar associations, are taking part in the annual Law Day of Action. Introduced in 1958 by President D. Eisenhower and envisioned by previous ABA President Charles S. Rhyne in 1957, Law Day is an annual commemoration held on May 1st to...