Florida Legislature Clarifies FCCPA to Allow Overnight Email Contact with Debtors

The Florida Legislature unanimously approved Senate Bill (SB) 232 on April 29, 2025, to update and clarify the Florida Consumer Collections Practices Act (FCCPA) by removing email communications from the list of prohibited practices. The Legislature added the following language to Florida Statute Section 552.72(17) that this "subsection does not apply to an e-mail communication that is sent to an e-mail address and that otherwise complies with this section." In its preamble statement in SB 232, the Legislature stated that Section 559.72(17) was adopted before email communication became commonly used and the only specific communication explicitly contemplated in such subsection was telephone calls. The Legislature also added that email communications sent and received after 9 p.m. and before 8 a.m. are "less invasive and less disruptive than telephone calls." 

Numerous Lawsuits Alleging Emails Violated FCCPA

The passage of SB 232 comes in response to an increasing number of individual and class action lawsuits filed in the last two years, asserting claims under the FCCPA focused on the sending of emails seeking to collect a debt or other payment during the so-called "prohibited" hours between 9 p.m. and 8 a.m. in the debtor's time zone. As payment systems have become increasingly automated and email communications have proliferated, these lawsuits affected many companies operating in Florida that may simply send payment reminders to their own customers after hours, sometimes at a time unilaterally determined by computer systems. Since the language of the FCCPA broadly defines "communications," the plaintiffs' attorneys argued that these overnight emails seeking payment violated the FCCPA.¹

The only court decision to question the logic of these claims was issued in November 2024 in Quinn-Davis v. TrueAccord Corp., No. 1:23-CV-23590, 2024 WL 4851344 (S.D. Fla. Nov. 20, 2024). The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida recognized that the FCCPA and Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) broadly defined "communication" and that emails are a form of communication. The court reviewed the text of the statutes and existing federal administrative interpretations, and with very little existing law on which to base its decision, the court ultimately decided that the time that the consumer opened the email is the time at which the creditor is deemed to have communicated "with" the debtor under the statutes. 

While litigants celebrated a court finally addressing the issue, the business community and defense bar quickly realized that such an interpretation would then leave to the consumer's discretion whether a violation of the statute incurred. For example, an early-rising consumer could open their email at 7:30 a.m. and therefore have an actionable case, whereas a consumer who did not open the very same email until 8:30 a.m. would not have a cause of action. This inconsistency highlighted the need for legislative clarification.

Legislature Steps In with Statutory Correction

SB 232 was introduced on Jan. 14, 2025. After passing through multiple committees, the Florida Senate approved final passage of the bill by a 36-0 vote on April 16, 2025. The Florida House of Representatives, which had been considering its own version of the bill, passed the Senate's version by a vote of 116-0 on April 29, 2025. The legislation is awaiting the governor's signature, but given its unanimous approval, the legislation is expected to become law, and by its stated language, "shall take effect upon becoming law."

Application to Existing Litigation

Regardless of SB 232's effective date, a pressing question remains: How does the new law impact pending cases? There is a strong argument that the Legislature's explicit intent in SB 232 to clarify existing law in stating that email communications are not included in the prohibited practice of after-hours communications means that the FCCPA was never intended to ever prohibit such emails, and therefore such claims are subject to dismissal even if brought prior to the effective date of SB 232. The structure of Section 552.77(17) prior to SB 232 only mentions telephone calls, and thus there already was a valid legal argument that email communications were not included. While it will be up to each court presiding over such claims to decide whether a collections email sent after 9 p.m. is actionable, no new claims will be valid going forward.

For more information on this matter, please contact the authors.

Notes

¹ It remains Florida law that the FCCPA covers companies collecting their own debts, unlike the federal FDCPA, that only generally covers debt collectors and excludes companies collecting their own debts with certain exceptions.

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