Chicago is a perennial top-five U.S. robocall city. YouMail put 1,899,881,500 robocalls into Illinois in 2025 and 1,194,540,500 so far in 2026. 119,697 DNC complaints — 943 per 100,000, fourth in the FTC book, up 17.7%.
Federal floor: TCPA $500 / $1,500 on illegal autodialed or prerecorded voice calls and on § 227(b) claims.
The 2026 change that matters: On July 14, 2026, the Seventh Circuit in Steidinger v. Blackstone Medical Services held that unwanted marketing texts are not “telephone calls” under the TCPA’s § 227(c)(5) DNC private right of action. That is binding in Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin. It does not erase prerecorded or autodialed voice claims under § 227(b). Do not build an Illinois DNC file on texts alone.
Illinois layer:
- Restricted Call Registry Act, 815 ILCS 402/50. A residential subscriber who gets a call in violation may recover actual damages plus statutory $500 per violation. One-year state limitations period.
- Telephone Solicitations Act, 815 ILCS 413, and the Automatic Telephone Dialers Act. Autodialer hours are often treated as 9 a.m.–9 p.m.
- Illinois also runs a Restricted Call Registry telemarketers must scrub.
Left on the table: 119,697 × $500 ≈ $59.8 million. × $1,500 ≈ $179.5 million. That is complaints only, at the federal floor. Add a qualifying 402/50 $500 count on the same voice call and the file stacks.
Register on the National DNC list and the Illinois Restricted Call Registry. Log voice calls with time stamps. Use the Illinois Playbook — and read the Seventh Circuit note before you plead a text-only DNC count.
This is a Q3 2026 TeleJustice Academy quarterly law update. Figures: YouMail Robocall Index (estimated volume); 2025 DNC complaint counts and per-capita rates from the FTC Data Book cycle. “Money left on the table” is complaint count × TCPA statutory minimums — an illustration, not a prediction. Robocall indexes include legal recorded calls. Only documented illegal calls and texts support a claim. Educational only. Not legal advice. TeleJustice Academy is not a law firm. Protect the file: donotcall.gov · state list where one exists · call log with date, time, number · screenshots · your state Playbook at telejusticeacademy.com and telejusticepro.com.