The rules around consent have been in motion for two years straight. Here's where they actually stand, and what defensible documentation looks like right now.
If you bought or sold leads any time in the last two years, you've felt the whiplash. The FCC's "one-to-one consent" rule — which would have required a separate, seller-specific consent for every marketing call or text — was adopted in late 2023, delayed, partially stayed, and ultimately struck down by the Eleventh Circuit in Insurance Marketing Coalition v. FCC in January 2025. The FCC formally abandoned the rule later that year. Then, in early 2026, the Fifth Circuit added another wrinkle, ruling that the TCPA's own text requires only "prior express consent" — not necessarily written consent — for prerecorded calls to wireless numbers in at least some circumstances.
None of that means consent stopped mattering. It means the compliance bar moved from "one rigid federal template" back to "prove it holds up in front of a judge" — which, for anyone buying or selling leads at volume, is arguably the harder standard.
Strip away the litigation history and the TCPA still prohibits calling or texting a wireless number using automated dialing technology or a prerecorded voice without the consumer's consent. For telemarketing specifically, that consent has to be prior express written consent (PEWC): a written agreement, tied to a specific phone number, that clearly authorizes the calls or texts and isn't buried as a condition of some unrelated purchase. Industry compliance guides generally recognize three tiers of consent — PEWC, prior express consent, and prior express invitation or permission — with PEWC as the strictest and safest standard to build around.
With the one-to-one rule gone, a single, clearly disclosed consent can once again cover multiple named sellers on one lead form — but "clearly disclosed" is doing a lot of work in that sentence. Courts have been consistent on one point across every recent ruling: the disclosure has to be conspicuous, logically tied to the interaction, and specific about who is authorized to call.
Regulatory guidance and litigation both point to the same handful of habits separating defensible lead sources from exposed ones:
For advertisers, the practical takeaway is simple: don't buy lead volume from a source that can't show you how consent was captured and documented. For publishers, it's the same lesson from the other direction — a compliant funnel is a sellable one, and a non-compliant one is a liability you're passing downstream whether you disclose it or not.
The regulatory pendulum will likely keep moving — that's been the pattern for three years running. What hasn't moved is the underlying question a court asks when a complaint lands: was consent clear, was it documented, and was it actually tied to this call? Building your consent capture around that question, rather than around whichever rule is currently in effect, is the only version of "compliant" that survives the next reversal.
Our team can walk through how this applies to your vertical and volume.