Minnesota's Do-Not-Call Law Expired in 2012. Here Is What Actually Governs Robocalls to a Minnesota Number.

Search for Minnesota’s telemarketing law and you will be told that Minn. Stat. § 325E.312, subd. 3, prohibits blocking a subscriber’s caller identification service, that §§ 325E.311 to 325E.317 make up a “Minnesota Telephone Solicitation Regulation Act,” and that telemarketers must register with the Department of Commerce and post a bond.

None of that is current law. Sections 325E.311 to 325E.316 expired on December 31, 2012, by their own terms. The Revisor of Statutes carries them as “MS 2010 [Expired, 2009 c 178 art 1 s 61].” There is no Minnesota do-not-call registry. There is no surviving Minnesota caller-ID provision in chapter 325E.

What Minnesota still has is a 1987 statute about answering machines that dial. It is short, it is narrower than most people assume, and in one specific respect it is stricter than federal law. Everything else on a Minnesota robocall claim is federal.

What exactly expired, and how?

The Minnesota no-call act was 2002 Minn. Laws ch. 367, codified at Minn. Stat. §§ 325E.311 to 325E.316. In its final published form (Minnesota Statutes 2010) it did four things.

It created a state registry. Section 325E.313, subd. 1, directed the commissioner of commerce to “establish and maintain a list of telephone numbers of residential subscribers who object to receiving telephone solicitations,” with the list to be “established by January 1, 2003.” Subdivision 3 allowed the commissioner to treat the FTC as its agent if the FTC established a national list under 15 U.S.C. § 6102(a).

It barred solicitation calls to listed numbers, required callers to identify themselves, and — the provision still quoted everywhere — addressed caller ID. Section 325E.312, subd. 3, read:

No caller who makes a telephone solicitation to a residential subscriber in this state shall knowingly use any method to block or otherwise deliberately circumvent the subscriber’s use of a caller identification service.

It gave enforcement to the commissioner. Section 325E.316, subd. 1, provided that “the commissioner has all powers provided by section 45.027, including, but not limited to, the power to impose a civil penalty to a maximum of $1,000 for each solicitation that violates section 325E.312.” Subdivision 3 set a two-year limitations period; subdivision 2 gave a due-care compliance defense.

And it was killed by a sunset added seven years later. Section 61 of article 1 of 2009 Minn. Laws ch. 178 enacted a new section coded as § 325E.3161, “TELEPHONE SOLICITATIONS; EXPIRATION PROVISION,” reading in its entirety:

Sections 325E.311 to 325E.316 expire December 31, 2012.

The sunset ran. The sections expired. Section 325E.3161 itself was then repealed as spent by 2013 Minn. Laws ch. 125, art. 1, § 108.

This matters more than a footnote, because the expired provisions are still reproduced across the internet as live Minnesota law — including on pages generated to look like legal guidance. Anyone drafting a Minnesota demand letter around § 325E.312 is citing a statute that has not existed for over a decade.

What survives in Minnesota law?

Sections 325E.26 to 325E.31 — the 1987 automatic dialing-announcing device act. It was never part of the no-call act and was not swept into the sunset.

The act turns on one defined machine. Section 325E.26, subd. 2:

“Automatic dialing-announcing device” means a device that selects and dials telephone numbers and that, working alone or in conjunction with other equipment, disseminates a prerecorded or synthesized voice message to the telephone number called.

Note what that definition does not reach. It requires both automated dialing and a prerecorded or synthesized voice message. A predictive dialer that connects to a live human agent is not an automatic dialing-announcing device under this definition. Neither is a text message.

The core prohibition is § 325E.27(a):

A caller shall not use or connect to a telephone line an automatic dialing-announcing device unless: (1) the subscriber has knowingly or voluntarily requested, consented to, permitted, or authorized receipt of the message; or (2) the message is immediately preceded by a live operator who obtains the subscriber’s consent before the message is delivered.

That is the whole rule: consent, or a live operator who gets consent before the recording plays.

Paragraph (b) then carves out three categories from both § 325E.27 and § 325E.30:

(b) This section and section 325E.30 do not apply to (1) messages from school districts to students, parents, or employees, (2) messages to subscribers with whom the caller has a current business or personal relationship, or (3) messages advising employees of work schedules. This section does not apply to messages from a nonprofit tax-exempt charitable organization sent solely for the purpose of soliciting voluntary donations of clothing to benefit disabled United States military veterans and containing no request for monetary donations or other solicitations of any kind.

The last sentence — added in 2009 by the same chapter that killed the no-call act — is one of the most specific carve-outs in the Minnesota code, and it applies only to § 325E.27, not to § 325E.30.

Three shorter sections fill it out.

Section 325E.28 requires the device to hang up: “A caller shall not use an automatic dialing-announcing device unless the device is designed and operated so as to disconnect within ten seconds after termination of the telephone call by the subscriber.”

Section 325E.29 requires the live operator, where one precedes the message, to disclose four things at the outset: the name of the entity for which the message is being made; the purpose of the message; the identity or kinds of goods or services the message is promoting; and, if applicable, the fact that the message intends to solicit payment or commitment of funds.

Section 325E.30 sets the calling window, and this is the sleeper:

A caller shall not use an automatic dialing-announcing device nor make any commercial telephone solicitation before 9:00 a.m. or after 9:00 p.m.

Where is Minnesota law stricter than federal law?

The morning hour, and it is a clean one-hour gap.

The FCC rule at 47 C.F.R. § 64.1200(c)(1) bars telephone solicitations to “[a]ny residential telephone subscriber before the hour of 8 a.m. or after 9 p.m. (local time at the called party’s location).”

Minnesota’s § 325E.30 says 9:00 a.m. A commercial telephone solicitation placed to a Minnesota residential line at 8:30 a.m. is permitted by the federal rule and prohibited by the Minnesota statute.

That gap survives because the TCPA expressly preserves it. 47 U.S.C. § 227(f)(1):

Except for the standards prescribed under subsection (d) and subject to paragraph (2) of this subsection, nothing in this section or in the regulations prescribed under this section shall preempt any State law that imposes more restrictive intrastate requirements or regulations on, or which prohibits— (A) the use of telephone facsimile machines or other electronic devices to send unsolicited advertisements; (B) the use of automatic telephone dialing systems; (C) the use of artificial or prerecorded voice messages; or (D) the making of telephone solicitations.

Note the scope of § 325E.30. It reaches two things: use of an automatic dialing-announcing device, and any “commercial telephone solicitation.” The second term is defined in § 325E.26, subd. 4, as “any unsolicited call to a residential subscriber when the person initiating the call has not had a prior business or personal relationship with the subscriber, and when the purpose of the call is to solicit the purchase or the consideration of purchase of goods or services by the subscriber.” So the 9:00 a.m. floor applies to live sales calls to Minnesota residences, not only to recorded ones.

There is a curiosity in that same definition. It excludes “calls initiated by organizations listed in Minnesota Statutes 2000, section 290.21, subdivision 3, clauses (a) to (e)” — a frozen reference to the corporate charitable-contribution deduction as it stood in 2000. Those clauses covered gifts to the State of Minnesota and its political subdivisions; to in-state religious, charitable, cemetery, scientific, literary, artistic, or educational organizations; to fraternal lodges and veterans’ posts; to the United States for gifts of Minnesota real property; and to certain foundations. That deduction subdivision was itself repealed in 2001. Minnesota’s telemarketing exemption for charities therefore runs through a tax provision that no longer exists, preserved only by the “Minnesota Statutes 2000” citation the legislature wrote into the definition.

Is there a private right of action under the Minnesota statute?

Yes — by express cross-reference, which is unusual and worth knowing. Section 325E.31:

(a) A person who is found to have violated sections 325E.27 to 325E.30 is subject to the penalties and remedies, including a private right of action to recover damages, as provided in section 8.31.

(b) In addition to the penalties and remedies under paragraph (a), the attorney general is entitled to sue for and recover on behalf of the state a civil penalty from a person found to have violated sections 325E.27 to 325E.30. The court must determine the civil penalty amount, which must not exceed $50,000.

Paragraph (b) is new. It was added by 2023 Minn. Laws ch. 57, art. 4, § 9, effective “the day following final enactment”; the governor signed the act on May 24, 2023, so the penalty became available May 25, 2023.

Two points about paragraph (a).

Section 325E.31 does the work that the statute’s own placement would not. Minnesota Statutes § 8.31, subd. 3a, gives a damages action only to a person “injured by a violation of any of the laws referred to in subdivision 1,” and §§ 325E.26 to 325E.31 are not on the subdivision 1 list. (Subdivision 1 does list “the act regulating telephone advertising services (section 325E.39)” — a different and much narrower statute about voice-mail advertising services.) Section 325E.31(a) supplies the connection directly.

The public-benefit requirement still applies. Because the remedy runs through § 8.31, subd. 3a, it carries the gloss the Minnesota Supreme Court put on that subdivision in Ly v. Nystrom, 615 N.W.2d 302 (Minn. 2000), where the court held, at 314, that “the Private AG Statute applies only to those claimants who demonstrate that their cause of action benefits the public.”

That matters here in a way it does not in a garden-variety consumer fraud case. In 2023 the legislature gave the Consumer Fraud Act its own private right of action and wrote into it the sentence “An action brought under this section benefits the public” — Minn. Stat. § 325F.70, subd. 3(a). No such sentence was written into § 325E.31. A robocall plaintiff proceeding under the Minnesota auto-dialer act still has to make the Ly showing. In a case about a mass-dialed campaign that is not a hard showing, but it is an element, and it should be pleaded. Our guide to the private attorney general statute covers the mechanics.

Neither § 325E.31 nor § 8.31 sets a limitations period. The general six-year period in Minn. Stat. § 541.05, subd. 1(2), for “a liability created by statute, other than those arising upon a penalty or forfeiture or where a shorter period is provided by section 541.07,” is the provision that fits. We located no Minnesota appellate decision applying it to a § 325E.31 claim, so treat the point as open and calendar conservatively.

Where is the caller-ID spoofing law, then?

Federal. 47 U.S.C. § 227(e), the Truth in Caller ID Act. Paragraph (1):

It shall be unlawful for any person within the United States, or any person outside the United States if the recipient is within the United States, in connection with any voice service or text messaging service, to cause any caller identification service to knowingly transmit misleading or inaccurate caller identification information with the intent to defraud, cause harm, or wrongfully obtain anything of value, unless such transmission is exempted pursuant to paragraph (3)(B).

Three features of that provision routinely surprise people.

Intent is an element. Spoofing is unlawful only when done “with the intent to defraud, cause harm, or wrongfully obtain anything of value.” A business that displays its main number rather than the dialing trunk is not covered. Paragraph (2) separately preserves the right to block caller ID: “Nothing in this subsection may be construed to prevent or restrict any person from blocking the capability of any caller identification service to transmit caller identification information.”

There is no private right of action. Subsection (e) provides for FCC civil forfeiture — under (e)(5)(A)(i), an amount that “shall not exceed $10,000 for each violation, or 3 times that amount for each day of a continuing violation, except that the amount assessed for any continuing violation shall not exceed a total of $1,000,000 for any single act or failure to act” — a criminal fine under (e)(5)(B), and enforcement by state attorneys general as parens patriae in federal district court under (e)(6)(A). It does not give the person who got the spoofed call a claim.

The state-law savings clause does not reach it. Paragraph (e)(9) provides: “Notwithstanding any other provision of this section, subsection (f) shall not apply to this subsection or to the regulations under this subsection.” Subsection (f) is the non-preemption clause quoted above. Whatever a state legislature might do about spoofing, it does not get the express federal protection that § 227(f)(1) gives to state auto-dialer, prerecorded-voice, and telephone-solicitation rules.

A separate FCC rule requires telemarketers to transmit caller ID. 47 C.F.R. § 64.1601(e) provides that any person or entity engaged in telemarketing “must transmit caller identification information,” and (e)(2) that such a person “is prohibited from blocking the transmission of caller identification information.” Tax-exempt nonprofits are excused by (e)(3). The FTC’s parallel rule, 16 C.F.R. § 310.4(a)(8), makes it an abusive telemarketing practice to fail to transmit “the telephone number, and, when made available by the telemarketer’s carrier, the name of the telemarketer, to any caller identification service in use by a recipient of a telemarketing call.”

What are the actual damages numbers under the TCPA?

Here the commonly repeated “$500 or $1,500” is close but imprecise, and the imprecision matters because the two private actions in § 227 are worded differently.

Section 227(b)(3) — for autodialed or prerecorded calls to cell phones, residential lines, emergency lines, and the like — allows an action “to recover for actual monetary loss from such a violation, or to receive $500 in damages for each such violation, whichever is greater.” The $1,500 figure is not in the statute as such; it comes from the next sentence: “If the court finds that the defendant willfully or knowingly violated this subsection or the regulations prescribed under this subsection, the court may, in its discretion, increase the amount of the award to an amount equal to not more than 3 times the amount available under subparagraph (B) of this paragraph.” Trebling is discretionary and requires willfulness or knowledge.

Section 227(c)(5) — the do-not-call action — is different in three ways. It is available only to “[a] person who has received more than one telephone call within any 12-month period by or on behalf of the same entity in violation of the regulations prescribed under this subsection.” Its damages figure is “up to $500 in damages for each such violation,” not a flat $500. And it carries an affirmative defense the (b)(3) action does not: “It shall be an affirmative defense in any action brought under this paragraph that the defendant has established and implemented, with due care, reasonable practices and procedures to effectively prevent telephone solicitations in violation of the regulations prescribed under this subsection.”

Note also the definition that governs (b): 47 U.S.C. § 227(a)(1) defines “automatic telephone dialing system” as equipment with the capacity “(A) to store or produce telephone numbers to be called, using a random or sequential number generator; and (B) to dial such numbers.” The FCC’s rule at 47 C.F.R. § 64.1200(f)(2) tracks that language. What equipment satisfies it has been the most heavily litigated question in the statute and is beyond this article.

Minnesota state attorneys general enforcement runs through 47 U.S.C. § 227(g)(1), which lets a state attorney general sue on behalf of residents for a “pattern or practice” of violating calls, with exclusive jurisdiction in the federal courts under (g)(2).

What are the do-not-call rules, since Minnesota has none?

Two federal regimes, both administered around the same registry.

The FCC rule. 47 C.F.R. § 64.1200(c)(2) bars telephone solicitations to “[a] residential telephone subscriber who has registered his or her telephone number on the national do-not-call registry,” and provides that registrations “must be honored indefinitely, or until the registration is cancelled by the consumer or the telephone number is removed by the database administrator.” There is a safe harbor for a seller that can show the call resulted from error despite written procedures, personnel training, a recorded no-call list, and use of a registry version obtained no more than 31 days before the call — § 64.1200(c)(2)(i)(A)–(D).

Separately, § 64.1200(d) requires anyone making telemarketing calls to residential subscribers to maintain a company-specific do-not-call list, with a written policy, trained personnel, a request-honoring deadline that “may not exceed ten (10) business days from the receipt of such request,” and retention of a request for five years — § 64.1200(d)(1), (3), (6). A company-specific request is often the more useful tool, because it works whether or not the number is on the national registry.

And § 64.1200(b) requires every artificial or prerecorded voice message to state, at the beginning, the identity of the business responsible for initiating the call, to state a callback number during or after the message, and — for telemarketing messages to residential lines and to the numbers described in (a)(1)(i)–(iii) — to provide an automated opt-out mechanism “within two (2) seconds of providing the identification information.”

The FTC rule. 16 C.F.R. § 310.4(b)(1)(iii)(B) makes it an abusive practice to call a person whose number “is on the ‘do-not-call’ registry, maintained by the Commission,” unless the seller can show express written agreement or an established business relationship. Subparagraph (b)(1)(iii)(A) separately covers a person who has told the seller not to call.

The FTC rule’s private remedy is theoretical for an individual. 15 U.S.C. § 6104(a) allows a private action, but only by a person “adversely affected by any pattern or practice of telemarketing,” only in federal district court, only within three years of discovery, and only “if the amount in controversy exceeds the sum or value of $50,000 in actual damages for each person adversely affected.” A consumer with a dozen unwanted calls does not clear that. The TCPA is where individual claims live.

Comparing the routes for a Minnesota consumer

What about junk faxes?

Minnesota kept a live statute here, and it is easy to overlook. Minn. Stat. § 325E.395 requires a business sending unsolicited advertising faxes to establish a toll-free opt-out number, to state that number and a mailing address in at least 9-point type on the fax, and to stop sending on request. Subdivision 3 gives it teeth: “A person who is found to have violated this section is subject to the penalties and remedies, including a private right of action, as provided in section 8.31.”

The federal counterpart is 47 U.S.C. § 227(b)(1)(C), which makes it unlawful “to use any telephone facsimile machine, computer, or other device to send, to a telephone facsimile machine, an unsolicited advertisement,” subject to an established-business-relationship exception with its own conditions. A fax claim therefore reaches § 227(b)(3)’s $500-per-violation remedy.

How long do you have?

Federal. The TCPA contains no limitations period. The general federal catchall at 28 U.S.C. § 1658(a) provides that “a civil action arising under an Act of Congress enacted after the date of the enactment of this section may not be commenced later than 4 years after the cause of action accrues.” Section 227 was added to the Communications Act by Pub. L. 102-243, § 3(a), on December 20, 1991 — after § 1658’s own enactment — so the four-year period is the one that fits by the statute’s own terms.

State. As discussed above, § 541.05, subd. 1(2), supplies six years for a liability created by statute, subject to its penalty-and-forfeiture carve-out, and we found no Minnesota appellate decision applying it to this act.

Practical steps if you are getting the calls

Keep the log, not the memory. Date, time to the minute, the number displayed, whether a live person or a recording answered, what was being sold, and what you said. Under § 227(c)(5) the count of calls in a 12-month window is an element; under § 325E.30 the minute is the element.

Say “put me on your do-not-call list,” and note the date. That triggers the company-specific obligation in 47 C.F.R. § 64.1200(d)(3), which must be honored within ten business days and retained for five years. It is independent of the national registry and it produces a dated, provable request.

Register on the national registry and wait. Section 227(c)(5) requires more than one violating call in a 12-month period, and the registry regulation is the source of most of those violations.

Identify the seller, not the dialer. Spoofed numbers usually lead nowhere. The recording almost always names the product or the seller — 47 C.F.R. § 64.1200(b)(1) requires it to — and that is the defendant.

Do not build a Minnesota claim on the expired sections. If a form complaint or a demand letter cites §§ 325E.311 to 325E.316, it is citing law that expired December 31, 2012.

For adjacent Minnesota privacy questions, see our overviews of the three Minnesota privacy regimes, the Minnesota Consumer Data Privacy Act, recording and surveillance consent, and — where the calls are about a debt rather than a sale — Minnesota debt collection practices. If the caller is impersonating you rather than calling you, start with steps for identity theft victims.

Madgett Law, LLC

Madgett Law, LLC represents Minnesota consumers in TCPA, debt collection, credit reporting, and consumer fraud matters in Minnesota state and federal court. If you are receiving autodialed or prerecorded calls, or calls after you asked the caller to stop, we can tell you whether the call log supports a claim and which statute reaches it. Call 612-470-6529 or send us a message.

Sources: Minn. Stat. § 325E.26, subd. 2 (automatic dialing-announcing device) and subd. 4 (commercial telephone solicitation; frozen reference to Minnesota Statutes 2000, § 290.21, subd. 3, cls. (a)–(e)); Minn. Stat. § 325E.27(a) (consent or live operator) and (b) (school district, existing-relationship, work-schedule, and veterans’-clothing carve-outs); Minn. Stat. § 325E.28 (ten-second disconnect); Minn. Stat. § 325E.29 (live-operator disclosures); Minn. Stat. § 325E.30 (9:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m.); Minn. Stat. § 325E.31(a) (private right of action via § 8.31) and (b) (attorney general civil penalty not exceeding $50,000); Minn. Stat. § 325E.39, subd. 1 (telephone advertising services); Minn. Stat. § 325E.395, subds. 1, 3 (unsolicited fax advertising; § 8.31 remedies); Minn. Stat. § 8.31, subd. 1 (designated statutes) and subd. 3a (private remedies); Minn. Stat. § 325F.70, subd. 3(a) (Consumer Fraud Act private action; statutory public-benefit sentence); Minn. Stat. § 541.05, subd. 1(2) (six years, liability created by statute); Minn. Stat. § 645.02 (default effective dates); Minnesota Statutes 2010, §§ 325E.311 to 325E.316 (expired no-call act: § 325E.312, subd. 3, caller-identification circumvention; § 325E.313, subds. 1, 3, registry and FTC-as-agent; § 325E.314, acquisition and use of list; § 325E.316, subds. 1–3, commissioner penalty to $1,000 per solicitation, defenses, two-year limit); 2002 Minn. Laws ch. 367 (enactment of the no-call act); 2009 Minn. Laws ch. 178, art. 1, § 61 (coding § 325E.3161: “Sections 325E.311 to 325E.316 expire December 31, 2012”) and § 60 (2009 amendment to § 325E.27); 2013 Minn. Laws ch. 125, art. 1, § 108 (repeal of § 325E.3161, per the Revisor’s chapter 325E table of sections); 2023 Minn. Laws ch. 57 (S.F. 2744), art. 4, § 9 (adding § 325E.31(b); effective the day following final enactment; signed May 24, 2023); Ly v. Nystrom, 615 N.W.2d 302, 314 (Minn. 2000) (public-benefit requirement under § 8.31, subd. 3a); 47 U.S.C. § 227(a)(1) (automatic telephone dialing system), (b)(1)(C) (unsolicited fax advertisements), (b)(3) ($500 per violation; discretionary treble for willful or knowing violations), (c)(5) (more than one call in 12 months; up to $500; due-care affirmative defense), (e)(1) (misleading caller identification with intent to defraud, cause harm, or wrongfully obtain value), (e)(2) (blocking preserved), (e)(5)(A)(i) (forfeiture not exceeding $10,000 per violation, 3x per day continuing, $1,000,000 cap), (e)(5)(B) (criminal fine), (e)(6)(A) (state attorney general parens patriae), (e)(9) (subsection (f) inapplicable to subsection (e)), (f)(1) (state law not preempted), (g)(1)–(2) (state actions; exclusive federal jurisdiction); Pub. L. 102-243, § 3(a), Dec. 20, 1991, 105 Stat. 2395 (enactment of 47 U.S.C. § 227); 28 U.S.C. § 1658(a) (four-year federal catchall); 15 U.S.C. § 6104(a) (private action under the Telemarketing Sales Rule; pattern or practice; $50,000 amount in controversy; three years from discovery); 47 C.F.R. § 64.1200(b)(1)–(3) (prerecorded message identification and opt-out), (c)(1) (8 a.m.–9 p.m.), (c)(2) and (c)(2)(i)(A)–(D) (national do-not-call registry and safe harbor), (d)(1), (3), (6) (company-specific list; ten business days; five-year retention), (f)(2) (autodialer definition); 47 C.F.R. § 64.1601(e)(1)–(3) (telemarketer caller-ID transmission; blocking prohibited; nonprofit exemption); 16 C.F.R. § 310.4(a)(8) (failure to transmit caller ID) and § 310.4(b)(1)(iii)(A)–(B) (do-not-call registry). This article is general legal information about Minnesota and federal law. It is not legal advice, it does not create an attorney–client relationship, and no particular outcome is promised or implied.