On August 12, the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland denied a debt collector’s motion to dismiss a complaint alleging the collector violated the FDCPA, finding that text messages sent to the consumer (plaintiff) seeking an email address after the consumer refused to pay on a debt constituted “communications,” even though the texts did not reference the debt or demand payment. The plaintiff alleged that after she responded to a collection text saying she was not paying the debt, the debt collector sent follow-up text messages thanking her for her message and asking for the consumer’s email address on file. The plaintiff filed a complaint pro se in September 2025, contending that the defendant’s request for her email address was a continued effort to collect on the debt despite invoking the FDCPA’s cease-communication protection in violation of 15 U.S.C. § 1692c(c). The plaintiff also alleged that as a result of the debt collector’s actions, she suffered damages “in the form of intrusion upon seclusion, invasion of privacy, loss of productive time,” as well as various purported negative emotional harms. The defendant moved to dismiss the complaint under Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 12(b)(l) and 12(b)(6) in October 2025.

The court found that the consumer had Article III standing, concluding that the consumer’s allegations were sufficient to establish an injury in fact at the pleading stage. On the merits, the court applied the FDCPA definition of communication, defined as “the conveying of information regarding a debt directly or indirectly to any person through any medium.” It found that the consumer plausibly alleged that the communication was prohibited under the FDCPA, as the request came “on the heels of” what the defendant did not dispute was a “notice of a debt” sent to the plaintiff. Although the court acknowledged that the follow-up texts did not explicitly reiterate a demand for payment or reference the amount owed, it found that the request for the consumer’s email address was part of “a broader message thread that included reference to a debt and an apparent request for payment of that debt.” Accordingly, the court denied the defendant’s motion, finding the consumer had stated a plausible claim, “if only barely so.”