If your business buys leads or works with a marketing partner who generates consumer contacts on your behalf, there is a piece of regulatory history from the past two years that you need to understand — because the liability for how those leads were sourced generally falls on you, not your vendor.
In 2023, the Federal Communications Commission issued a rule designed to close what regulators called the “lead generator loophole.” Under the old system, a single consent given on a comparison-shopping website could be treated as consent to be contacted by dozens of different companies — even though the consumer likely believed they were only agreeing to hear from one. The FCC’s order was designed to require that lead generators and comparison sites obtain consent to be contacted “one seller at a time,” rather than relying on a single blanket consent covering multiple, often unrelated, companies. [1]
That rule did not survive intact. On January 24, 2025, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals vacated the FCC’s one-to-one consent rule in Insurance Marketing Coalition v. FCC, holding that the agency had exceeded its statutory authority under the TCPA. [2] The practical effect was to undo the specific one-to-one consent requirement — at least for now.
Here is why that legal back-and-forth should not make any business complacent. The Eleventh Circuit’s decision vacated the FCC’s specific new rule. It did not eliminate the underlying TCPA requirement that businesses obtain proper prior express consent before making telemarketing calls or sending texts, and it did not change the basic Do Not Call and telemarketing compliance obligations that already existed. [2]
More importantly, liability for improperly sourced leads generally rests with the business making the call — not the lead generator or vendor who supplied the contact. If your business calls a consumer based on a lead that was improperly sourced, unclear on consent, or obtained through a blanket consent arrangement that a court might later find deficient, you are the party most exposed to the legal and financial consequences, regardless of what your lead vendor told you about their process.
This is why compliant consent practices matter regardless of how the regulatory landscape continues to shift. The rules governing exactly how consent must be documented may change again — courts and the FCC are still actively working through these questions — but the core principle has remained constant for years: a business is responsible for verifying that any consumer it contacts has given valid, verifiable consent to be contacted by that specific business.
Before working with any lead source, ask directly how consent was obtained, whether it was specific to your business or shared across multiple buyers, and what documentation exists to prove it. That diligence is not optional. It is the foundation of defensible compliance.
Conversion Media Group operates with rigorous, verifiable consent practices built into every program we run. Call us at 1-800-419-3201 to learn more about how we protect our partners.
[1] Consumer Financial Services Law Monitor, “Eleventh Circuit Vacates FCC’s One-to-One Consent Rule”
[2] Troutman Pepper, “Eleventh Circuit Re-Opens TCPA Lead Generator Loophole”