Is a Cell Phone a Residential Line? Two October Rulings Narrow the DNC Claim

Three answers to one question in 22 days#

B2B outreach runs on the work cell. The number in a prospect's signature is usually a personal mobile used for the job, so whether it counts as residential decides whether the do-not-call claim exists.

Between 11 September and 2 October 2026, three federal district courts answered pieces of that question. Two of the opinions are on CourtListener, and both were read in full on 7 Oct 2026.

None of them came from an appeals court, and none of them binds a judge outside its own district.

• Anthony v. Brian Marketing Group, No. 24-cv-80800, 2026 WL 2685650 (S.D. Fla. 11 Sep 2026): Judge Aileen M. Cannon held that cell phone users are not residential telephone subscribers for the do-not-call claim (Duane Morris, 21 Sep 2026).
• Lowrey v. Twilio, Inc., No. 6:25-cv-00116 (W.D. Va. 1 Oct 2026), Dkt. 99: Judge Norman K. Moon held that texts are not telephone calls under section 227(c)(5), and that section 227(c) applies only to residential landlines.
• Dobronski v. Tony Packo's Toledo, LLC, No. 2:25-cv-13117 (E.D. Mich. 2 Oct 2026), ECF 20: Judge Robert J. White dismissed with prejudice because the number was a business line when it went on the registry in 2003.

Where the word residential comes from#

Section 227(c)(1) of the TCPA tells the FCC to protect residential telephone subscribers' privacy rights. The registry rule, 47 CFR 64.1200(c)(2), bars solicitations to a residential subscriber who registered.

The FCC's own definition, 47 CFR 64.2305(d), says a residential subscriber is a subscriber that is not a business subscriber. Cell phones entered the picture by order, not by statute.

• FCC 03-153, paragraph 36 (2003): the Commission said it will presume wireless subscribers who ask to be put on the national do-not-call list to be residential subscribers.
• The same sentence carries a condition most summaries drop: the presumption may require a complaining wireless subscriber to provide further proof of its validity should the FCC need to take enforcement action.
• 47 CFR 64.1200(e), current text read on eCFR on 7 Oct 2026, applies the registry rules to telemarketing calls or text messages to wireless numbers, to the extent described in that 2003 order.
• Registrations must be honored indefinitely, or until the consumer cancels or the number is removed by the database administrator (47 CFR 64.1200(c)(2)). That rule is what made Dobronski a 23-year-old question.

Lowrey: a cell phone is not a residential line#

Lowrey is an odd case to carry a big holding. The plaintiff, an estate executor, got dozens of probate-services texts and AI-voiced calls, and sued Twilio, OpenAI and the marketer behind them.

Judge Moon dismissed the do-not-call counts on two independent grounds. Text messages are not telephone calls, and section 227(c) reaches residential landlines, not cell phones.

The second ground is the new one for B2B teams, because it does not depend on the message type at all.

• The text reading: a residence is a building used as a home, while a cellphone is a portable device that can be used anywhere by connecting to a mobile network (opinion, page 13).
• The structure reading: section 227(b) names cellular telephone service and residential telephone lines separately, so treating them as one would make one of those clauses superfluous (page 14, citing Barr v. AAPC, 591 U.S. 610 (2020)).
• The deference point: footnote 7 cites Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, 603 U.S. 369 (2024). The court reads the statute itself and owes no deference to the FCC's 2003 presumption.
• Duane Morris, a defense firm, called the Anthony version of this holding "certainly the minority view" on 21 Sep 2026, and said companies are not yet at the stage where they can take that liability off the table.

Dobronski: the registration was void from day one#

Mark Dobronski alleged three unsolicited marketing texts from Tony Packo's Toledo, LLC between May and September 2025, sent to a number he said was personal and registered since 2003.

Tony Packo's answered with public records: a 2001 FCC license and a 2003 Teletech financial report listing the same number as a business contact, plus Dobronski's own earlier lawsuits describing it as a railroad's line.

Judge White held that business numbers cannot be registered, so the 2003 registration was void ab initio. Retiring in 2021 and moving the number to personal use in 2022 could not repair it.

• The court declined to apply the FCC's presumption that registered numbers are residential, because the records showed business use before the claimed registration date.
• The contrast case is Shelton v. Professional Source Lending (E.D. Pa. 14 Mar 2025), where a plaintiff registered in 2015, a year before starting a business, and was allowed to proceed once the number went back to personal use.
• Shelton I (E.D. Pa. 2019) and Worsham v. Discount Power (D. Md. 6 Jan 2021) both dismissed plaintiffs who had held their numbers out to the world as business lines.
• The FTC's registry FAQ, quoted in Shelton I and again in Dobronski: the National Do Not Call Registry is only for personal phone numbers, and business-to-business calls are not covered.

Where the residential question stands, decision by decision#

Read the rulings as a spectrum rather than a verdict. The FCC presumption still governs most courtrooms, and the Ninth Circuit has applied it to a work-used phone.

Each row names a decision, the court and date, and what it would mean for a text to a prospect's work cell.

What survived inside the same opinions#

Lowrey is the better teacher here, because the judge dismissed some counts and kept others. The dismissed counts are the ones people will quote.

Count 3, a Virginia Telephone Privacy Protection Act claim for texting and calling numbers on the national registry, was not dismissed. A state statute did what the federal claim could not.

• Section 227(b)(1)(A)(iii) claims for artificial-voice calls to a cell phone survived. That section names cellular telephone service in plain words, so the residential argument never touches it.
• Twilio and OpenAI were held to have plausibly made or initiated the calls, which the court called telemarketers, albeit the 21st century version of them (page 10). Their terms-of-service defense was premature at that stage.
• A two-step pitch is still a solicitation. Telemarketers cannot insulate themselves by saying they hear you need a service and asking you to call a number for more information (pages 16-17).
• Footnote 11 says some dismissed counts may be revived by a new class representative who got calls on a residential line. The holding narrows who can sue, not what the sender did.
• California is still holding out. Combs v. UG Franchise Operations, 2026 WL 2970636 (C.D. Cal. 2 Oct 2026), treated texts as calls for do-not-call purposes (TCPAWorld, 5 Oct 2026).

Keep the evidence that won Dobronski#

Tony Packo's won with documents that existed before anyone texted anyone. A sales team can build the same file for every number it sends to, as a habit, at the moment the number enters the CRM.

None of this replaces a registry scrub. Most courts still apply the 2003 presumption, so a registered cell is a residential number until a judge in your case says otherwise.

• Record where each number came from: the company site page, the email signature, the business listing. Save the URL and the date you captured it, because Dobronski turned on dates.
• Treat numbers from consumer data sources as residential, whatever the job title attached to them. Provenance is the defense, and a consumer append has none.
• Keep scrubbing against the national registry and your internal list. Under 47 CFR 64.1200(d)(6) a do-not-call request is recorded and honored for 5 years from the day it is made.
• Check the state, not only the federal claim. Lowrey's surviving Virginia count is the clearest example this month of a state law reaching what section 227(c) no longer does.

Where Blue Reacher sits in this#

Blue Reacher sends over iMessage, so no A2P registration is required. That is a carrier-registration fact, and it changes nothing about consent law or the do-not-call rules.

Messages send from your CRM, so the provenance note, the reply and the opt-out all land on the same contact record in a database you already own.

We are a vendor in this category. Nothing here is legal advice, and every citation is dated so your counsel can check it.

• Pacing is published: no total daily message cap, replies are never metered, and new conversations pace at 50 opted-in or 30 cold new contacts per line per day.
• Opt-out handling is documented at /features/opt-out-handling, including how a revocation is recognized and applied to the contact.
• For the companion question, whether a text is a call at all, the circuit-by-circuit map sits at /blog/are-texts-calls-tcpa-dnc-map.

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