The U.S. Supreme Court ruled against a Montana man who sued to stop Facebook from continually texting him security alerts despite his lack of a Facebook account; some legal observers believe this ruling sets a precedent for more robocalls and texts on top of what people already get, CNN reported.

The ruling essentially held that the law under which the plaintiff sued Facebook, the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, specifically bans "automatic dialing telephone systems," defined as devices that have the capacity either to store or produce a telephone number using a random or sequential number generator. Facebook, as well as the majority of other companies, do not use this specific technology, and so the high court ruled it was not in violation of this law.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who wrote the decision, said that the plaintiff's quarrel is with Congress, which too narrowly defined what an auto-dialer is. However, CNN reported that the  National Consumer Law Center expressed fears that telemarketers and scammers will seize on the decision to structure their operations similarly to Facebook's so that they too can enjoy legal protection.