Pennsylvania has unanimously passed Senate Bill 992, a sweeping overhaul of the state’s telemarketing laws that carries serious consequences for businesses making unsolicited contact with consumers.
The Pennsylvania House and Senate both passed SB 992 on July 12, 2026, sending the legislation to Governor Josh Shapiro for signature.
Once signed, businesses operating outbound calling, texting, or voicemail programmes targeting Pennsylvania consumers will have just 90 days to achieve full compliance.
The bill was sponsored by Senator Michele Brooks (R-50) and developed with input from Attorney General Dave Sunday, passing every committee and floor vote unanimously.
The law updates the Telemarketer Registration Act of 1996, a statute that predates smartphones, SMS marketing, synthetic voice technology, and ringless voicemail platforms entirely.
The expanded definition of telephone solicitation now expressly covers voicemails, ringless voicemails, and text messages, closing gaps that businesses had long exploited to sidestep older regulations.
Telemarketing calls, texts, and voicemails are now banned entirely on Sundays and restricted to the hours of 9:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. on weekdays, keyed to the recipient’s local time zone.
No robocall may be placed to any residential, business, or wireless line without prior express written consent, with narrow exceptions for emergencies or specific statutory exemptions.
Penalties reach up to $1,000 per violation, rising to $3,000 per violation where the consumer is aged 60 or older, creating a significant financial exposure for high-volume callers.
Violations also constitute breaches of Pennsylvania’s Unfair Trade Practices and Consumer Protection Law, which carries a private right of action permitting recovery of actual damages or $100, whichever is greater.
Liability extends beyond the caller to the company that hired them, meaning businesses are directly accountable for unlawful conduct carried out by third-party telemarketing vendors on their behalf.
The bill prohibits the use of AI-generated or computer-generated messages to deceive consumers, and bans caller ID spoofing, including the neighbour-spoofing practice of mimicking a consumer’s own area code.
A key safe harbour protects legitimate businesses: communications made under prior express written consent, or within an established business relationship from the past 12 months, fall outside the statute’s definition of telephone solicitation.
The House adopted an amendment exempting consent-based SMS, transactional notices, and customer service messages from registration requirements, with the final bill also codifying uniform opt-out keywords including STOP, QUIT, END, and UNSUBSCRIBE.
In 2022, then-Attorney General Shapiro settled with an energy company that had placed more than 355,000 unlawful calls to consumers registered on the Do Not Call list, illustrating the scale of abuse the new law targets.
Pennsylvania now joins Texas, Oregon, and other states that have enacted their own state-level telemarketing statutes, confirming that federal TCPA compliance alone is no longer sufficient for national calling programmes.
Businesses are advised to audit consent records for every Pennsylvania number, review vendor contracts for compliance covenants and indemnification provisions, and ensure dialers and platforms apply suppression rules based on the recipient’s location.
As Benjamin Franklin observed, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” a principle that applies with particular force when each interrupted Sunday dinner could carry a four-figure price tag.