In April 2021 the Supreme Court told the country what an autodialer is under federal law, and most agents who heard about it heard this: my dialer calls numbers from a list, it does not generate them randomly, so the autodialer question is closed. For the federal statute, that is close to right, and the TCPA piece explains the remaining edges. For an agent dialing into Florida, Oklahoma, Washington or Maryland, it is wrong, because those states wrote their own telemarketing statutes with their own definitions, and several of those definitions were written specifically to reach the equipment the federal definition no longer does.
The correction is short. Four states. The federal ruling in Facebook v. Duguid narrowed one definition in one statute. It did not narrow the states, and the states have been busy. This is operational education, not legal advice, and the statutes below change often enough that the review date at the top of this piece matters.
Why a state definition matters when the federal one is narrow
The federal statute restricts calls made with an automatic telephone dialing system, and after 2021 that phrase means equipment that stores or produces numbers using a random or sequential number generator. A dialer working through a list an agent uploaded is, on the current reading, outside it.
The state statutes do not use that phrase. Florida’s and Maryland’s restrict calls made with an “automated system for the selection or dialing of telephone numbers,” or, in Florida since 2023, “selection and dialing.” Neither says anything about random or sequential generation. A system that takes the next number off a list and dials it is selecting and dialing by automation, on a plain reading, and that is the reading plaintiffs’ lawyers have brought to court in those states. Maryland’s legislature left its term undefined on purpose so that it would be read more broadly than the federal one.
So the question the federal ruling answered comes back in each of those states as: does my dialer, in the mode I run it, select and dial numbers automatically within the meaning of this state’s statute? Nobody can answer that from a sales page. Nobody. It depends on the mode, the statute’s exact words, and how that state’s courts have read them so far.
The four states, on the terms that matter to a dial
Every mini-TCPA has dozens of provisions. Four terms decide whether a real estate agent’s cold call is legal: what the statute restricts, what consent it requires, the calling window and frequency cap, and who can sue. The table compares the four states verified for this piece on those terms.
| Florida | Oklahoma | Washington | Maryland | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Statute | Fla. Stat. 501.059, amended 2023 | 15 O.S. 775C | RCW 80.36.390 and related | Md. Code Com. Law 14-4601 and following, effective January 1, 2024 |
| What it restricts | Sales calls and texts using an automated system for the selection and dialing of numbers, or a recorded or artificial voice | Sales calls using an automated system for selection or dialing, or a recorded voice, closely modeled on Florida’s 2021 text | Commercial solicitation conduct: hours, ending calls on request, honoring do-not-call requests | Telephone solicitations using an automated system for selection or dialing, or a prerecorded message; the term is deliberately undefined |
| Consent standard | Prior express written consent for automated or recorded calls; since 2023 a checkbox or an affirmative text reply can be a signature | Prior express written consent for automated or recorded calls | Not the focus; conduct rules apply to live solicitation | Prior express written consent, with signature and a disclosure that consent is not a condition of purchase |
| Window and frequency | 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.; three calls in 24 hours on the same subject | 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.; three calls in 24 hours on the same subject | 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.; end the call within ten seconds if asked | 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.; three calls in 24 hours on the same subject |
| Who can sue | Private right of action: $500 per violation, treble for willful; texts require a fifteen-day STOP cure since 2023 | Private right of action modeled on Florida’s | State enforcement; do-not-call requests must be honored for at least a year | Enforcement under the Consumer Protection Act with civil penalties up to $10,000, and private claims |
Read the table for the pattern rather than the detail. Three of the four moved the evening cutoff to 8 p.m. Three of the four cap calls at three per day on the same subject. Three of the four restrict automated dialing under a definition that is wider than the federal one. Washington is the outlier, regulating conduct on the call rather than the equipment behind it. And two of them, Florida and Maryland, are the models the other states copy, in opposite directions. Florida narrowed its statute in 2023 after two years of class actions. Maryland broadened its own in 2024, borrowing Florida’s original language and declining to define the key term at all.
What this means for a live cold call
Start with the good news. It is the same news the four-rule overview delivers about the federal rules. A live person, dialing one number at a time, speaking in their own voice, inside the window, to a number that cleared the registry and the internal list, is legal in all four states. Nothing in any mini-TCPA bans a human being from calling a homeowner. The state statutes tighten the hours and add the frequency cap, and those are handled by the list, as the calling hours piece describes.
The exposure is in the equipment. If your dialer, in the mode you run it, selects the next number and places the call without a person choosing it, an argument exists in Florida, Oklahoma and Maryland that the call was made with an automated system for selection and dialing, and that argument does not care what the federal definition says. Multi-line modes, where the system dials several numbers at once and connects whoever answers, are the clearest case. Single-line modes where the agent clicks each number are the strongest position. Everything in between is a question for a compliance attorney who knows that state’s case law, and the dialer modes piece is the vocabulary for that conversation.
The consent standard closes the other door. Prior express written consent, the signed, disclosed kind, is what these statutes require before automated or recorded calls, and a cold list has none of it. That means the same three things the federal rule already means: no prerecorded messages, no voicemail drops, no AI voice, to any homeowner in those states who did not sign something first.
The practical response
Agents dialing into any of the four states, whether they live there or are reaching a relocated owner whose number rings there, can do four things without waiting for a court to settle the definitions.
Tag every record with the homeowner’s state, from the property address or the mailing address for an absentee owner, and let the list apply the 8 p.m. cutoff and the three-call counter automatically for those records. That handles the hours and frequency rules in all four states with no memory required.
Run the strictest mode you can afford for those records. If your workflow allows a single-line, agent-initiated dial for Florida, Oklahoma and Maryland numbers and a multi-line mode for everyone else, that split is worth the contact-rate cost until your attorney tells you otherwise. The list allocation already puts anything with history on a single line; adding a state rule to that logic is a small change.
Get a written opinion on your configuration for each of those states, not a general one. The question is specific: this software, this mode, this statute, this year. A vendor’s assurance settles nothing, and an opinion about the federal statute does not transfer.
And keep the consent records the call record describes, with dates and words, because in Florida the difference between a lawsuit and a dismissed one can be whether a homeowner’s text reply counts as a signature, and the record is the only place that evidence lives.
The list will grow
Four states are covered here because their statutes were verified for this piece. Others have enacted or amended telemarketing laws with narrower windows, consent requirements or private rights of action, and legislatures in several more have bills moving. The compliance guide tracks the rule sets for all fifty-one jurisdictions, and the review date on this article is the honest measure of how current it is. The one thing that will not change is the shape of the problem: the federal autodialer question was settled narrowly, the states are settling it broadly, and an agent with a dialer has to answer it once per state they call into, not once.