Susan Allan v. Penn. Higher Educ. Assistance Agency, 968 F.3d 567

Plaintiffs Jessica Wilson and Susan Allan revoked consent to collection calls in October 2013; PHEAA nonetheless placed 353 calls after revocation (134 to Wilson, 219 to Allan) and left at least 30 automated voicemails.
PHEAA used the Avaya Proactive Contact predictive-dialer system: calling lists are generated daily by automated batch processes and the system dials stored numbers and connects answered calls to live agents.
Plaintiffs sued under the TCPA, alleging unconsented automated calls; the district court granted summary judgment for Plaintiffs and awarded $176,500 in damages.
On appeal, the principal question was statutory: whether a dialing system that calls from a stored list (not by randomly or sequentially generating numbers) qualifies as an ATDS under 47 U.S.C. § 227(a)(1).
The Sixth Circuit examined the text of § 227(a)(1), related provisions (notably the consent exception and the now-severed government-debt exception), and circuit precedent; it affirmed that stored-number systems like Avaya qualify as ATDS.
The court also held the district court properly considered the 30 prerecorded voicemails introduced at summary judgment because they were part of the alleged 353 violations and presented an alternative theory of recovery.

Issue	Plaintiff's Argument	Defendant's Argument	Held
Whether Avaya’s stored-list predictive dialer qualifies as an ATDS under the TCPA §227(a)(1)	§227(a)(1) covers equipment that can store numbers and dial them; stored-number systems are within the autodialer ban	ATDS requires capacity to store or produce numbers using a random or sequential number generator; Avaya does not generate numbers and thus is not an ATDS	Court held stored-list devices qualify as ATDS; affirmed summary judgment for Plaintiffs (joins 2nd and 9th Circuits)
Whether district court properly considered 30 prerecorded voicemails introduced at summary judgment though not expressly pleaded	Voicemails were part of the 353 calls alleged and thus may be considered as an alternative theory of recovery	Voicemails were not included in the complaint and should be excluded	Court held the voicemails were properly considered because they were included within the calls alleged in the complaint

Marks v. Crunch San Diego, LLC, 904 F.3d 1041 (9th Cir. 2018) (held stored-number dialing systems can be ATDS)
Duran v. La Boom Disco, Inc., 955 F.3d 279 (2d Cir. 2020) (concluded stored-list systems qualify as ATDS)
Gadelhak v. AT&T Servs., Inc., 950 F.3d 458 (7th Cir. 2020) (adopted narrower reading: ATDS requires random/sequential number generator)
Glasser v. Hilton Grand Vacations Co., 948 F.3d 1301 (11th Cir. 2020) (similarly held ATDS must generate numbers randomly or sequentially)
ACA Int’l v. Fed. Commc’ns Comm’n, 885 F.3d 687 (D.C. Cir. 2018) (invalidated parts of the FCC’s ATDS interpretation; recognized competing reasonable interpretations)
Bostock v. Clayton County, 140 S. Ct. 1731 (2020) (invoked for textualist statutory-interpretation principles)