Utility companies and school districts on Thursday won some relief from the ever-brightening spotlight of “robocall” lawsuits, as federal regulators clarified the scope of automated alerts the two groups can send without fear of litigation.

The FCC made clear in a declaratory ruling that customers who provide their phone numbers to utility companies are giving consent to receive robocalls related to their service, such as an alert about an outage or a warning about a payment issue.