Quiet Hours
8 a.m.-9 p.m. recipient time federally, 8 p.m. cutoff in the strict states. Schedule to the strictest window you might hit.
The TCPA's time-of-day rule is recipient-centric: telemarketing calls and texts are barred outside 8 a.m.-9 p.m. at the recipient's location. The sender's timezone is irrelevant, and area code is an unreliable proxy for location — a fact plaintiff firms exploit with traveling-plaintiff claims.
State overlays tighten the window: Florida and Oklahoma end at 8 p.m. and add frequency caps (three attempts per 24 hours on the same matter in Florida). Washington's CEMA and other statutes add their own wrinkles.
Operational practice: schedule campaigns inside 9 a.m.-8 p.m. recipient-local as a safe harbor across jurisdictions, derive timezone from more than area code where possible, and exempt genuinely transactional messages (which fall outside telemarketing rules) carefully.
Frequently asked questions
Related glossary terms
Mini-TCPA laws are state statutes regulating calls and texts alongside the federal TCPA — Florida's FTSA, Oklahoma's TSA, and others — often with broader autodialer definitions, stricter hours, and separate statutory damages.
The FTSA is Florida's telemarketing statute covering automated marketing calls and texts to Florida numbers, with statutory damages of $500-$1,500 per violation and a broader equipment definition than the federal TCPA.
The Telephone Consumer Protection Act is a US federal law (47 U.S.C. § 227) that restricts marketing calls and texts to mobile phones, with statutory damages of $500–$1,500 per violation.