WASHINGTON—The Supreme Court of the United States has agreed to consider fines imposed on Verizon and AT&T in two cases that could have a wide-ranging impact on the Federal Communications Commission’s ability to impose fines without a jury trial.
The cases involve massive penalties totaling nearly $200 million that the FCC imposed on Verizon ($47 million), AT&T ($57 million), T-Mobile ($80 million) and other wireless carriers for failing to protect their customer’s location data.
Over the past 15 years, SCOTUS has been steadily chipping away at the authority of regulatory agencies, most notably in its rejection of the Chevron doctrine, and in a 2024 ruling in Securities & Exchange Commission v. Jarkesy. In the SEC case, the Court ruled 6-3 that the securities regulatory must bring fraud cases seeking civil penalties in federal court instead of relying on the regulator's internal tribunals.
Based on the SEC case, both Verizon and AT&T appealed the fines, arguing that the FCC was denying the defendants their right to a jury trial by issuing the fines.
The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York denied that argument in the Verizon case and upheld the fine but the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans overturned the fines against AT&T.
Following that, Verizon appealed the 2nd Circuit ruling to SCOTUS and the FCC appealed the AT&T case. SCOTUS’ decision to hear the cases together will resolve the conflict between the judgements by the two Circuit Courts.
“And the decision below has serious practical consequences, since it deprives the Commission of one of its most important regulatory remedies and severely impairs the agency’s ability to enforce federal communications law,” Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote in the government’s petition to SCOTUS according to the Hill.
