Rotkiske v. Klemm
The Supreme Court ruled that the one-year deadline for suing a debt collector under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act starts running on the date the violation actually happened, not on the date the consumer discovers it.
Because the consumer in this case waited more than six years after the alleged violation to sue, and had not properly raised a fraud-based exception earlier in the case, his lawsuit was too late.
“The FDCPA limitations period begins to run on the date the alleged FDCPA violation actually happened.”
The Court's core holding on when the one-year clock starts under the debt-collection law.
How it got here: A federal district court dismissed the suit as untimely; the Third Circuit, sitting en banc, unanimously affirmed; the Supreme Court granted review due to a circuit split.
The Case in Depth
What happened
Kevin Rotkiske fell behind on credit card debt, and a debt-collection firm, Klemm & Associates, sued him twice, both times having someone other than Rotkiske accept service at an address where he no longer lived. Klemm won a default judgment in 2009. Rotkiske says he didn't learn about the judgment until 2014, when it blocked a mortgage application, and he sued Klemm under the federal debt-collection law in 2015.
The question before the Court
If a debt collector's illegal conduct isn't discovered until years later, does the one-year clock for suing under the federal debt-collection law start anyway?
The Court's answer
No — the Court ruled that the FDCPA's one-year deadline to sue a debt collector starts running on the date the violation actually happened, not on the date the consumer later discovers it. The law's text says lawsuits must be filed 'within one year from the date on which the violation occurs,' and the Court read that language as clear on its face, refusing to add an unwritten discovery-based starting point that Congress chose not to include.
The Court left open whether a separate, narrower fraud-based exception could ever delay the deadline when a debt collector's own fraud hid the violation, because Rotkiske hadn't properly raised that argument earlier in the case. As a result, his lawsuit, filed more than six years after the alleged violation, was too late.
Curious how the Court got there? See the step-by-step legal reasoning →
Why it matters
Consumers who don't immediately realize a debt collector broke the law now have only one year from the violation itself, not from when they find out about it, to sue under this federal law. People who are unaware of shady collection tactics — including sham lawsuits or hidden default judgments — may lose the ability to sue unless they can separately prove they were victims of fraud that excuses the delay.
What changes now
The ruling is final on the question presented: the FDCPA's one-year deadline runs from the date of the violation, not its discovery. The Court explicitly left open whether an equitable, fraud-based discovery rule could ever excuse a late FDCPA claim, since that issue wasn't properly preserved here. Future plaintiffs who properly raise a fraud-based argument in the lower courts may still be able to pursue that separate exception.
What this does not decide
The Court did not decide whether the FDCPA's text even permits an equitable, fraud-specific 'discovery rule' exception, or whether Rotkiske's allegations would qualify for it. That question was left open because Rotkiske failed to properly raise it in the lower court and in his certiorari petition — a point of sharp disagreement with the dissent.
Concurrences and dissents
Concurrence — Justice Sotomayor
Justice Sotomayor joined the majority but wrote to stress that the fraud-specific equitable discovery rule is not a recent, dubious innovation but a long-recognized historical exception for suits based on fraud, tracing back to 19th-century cases. She emphasized that today's decision does not prevent future litigants who properly preserve the issue from invoking that well-established doctrine.
Dissent in part — Justice Ginsburg
“Klemm allegedly employed fraudulent service to obtain and conceal the default judgment that precipitated Rotkiske's FDCPA claim.”Ginsburg's explanation of why she believed a fraud-based exception should apply.
Justice Ginsburg agreed the general discovery rule doesn't apply to the FDCPA's deadline, but argued Rotkiske had adequately preserved a fraud-based discovery rule argument, both in the Court of Appeals and in his certiorari filings. She would have held that Klemm's alleged 'sewer service' -- deliberately serving process where Rotkiske wouldn't receive it -- was exactly the kind of fraud that should delay the deadline until discovery, and would have sent the case back for further proceedings.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court began with the text of the law, which says a lawsuit 'may be brought ... within one year from the date on which the violation occurs.' Courts normally start with the plain words of a statute, and if those words are clear, that ends the analysis.
- Using dictionary definitions from the time the law was written, the Court read 'violation occurs' to mean the moment the illegal act actually happened, not the moment someone learns about it.
- The Court noted that when Congress wants a deadline to start on the date of discovery instead of the date of the violation, it says so explicitly in other statutes; because it didn't do that here, courts should not read in a discovery-based starting point that Congress chose not to include.
- The consumer separately argued that a different, narrower doctrine — a fraud-specific rule that delays a deadline's start when a defendant's fraud kept the harm hidden — should apply here. The Court did not rule on whether that doctrine could ever apply to this law, because the consumer had not properly raised it in the lower court or in his petition seeking review.
- Because the general 'violation occurs' starting point applied and the fraud-specific exception was not properly before the Court, the consumer's lawsuit — filed more than six years after the underlying conduct — was untimely.