The court ruled 8-1 on June 4 in favour of the FCC, with Chief Justice John Roberts authoring the majority opinion and Justice Clarence Thomas the sole dissenter.
At the heart of the dispute was whether the FCC’s system for imposing financial penalties, known as forfeiture orders, deprived AT&T and Verizon of their constitutional right to a jury trial.
The carriers argued that the agency’s in-house proceedings impermissibly substituted for a process that belongs in court, and that initial assessments of wrongdoing inflicted reputational harm before the accused had their day before a judge.
Roberts rejected that argument. Writing for the majority, he concluded that forfeiture orders issued by the FCC do not definitively resolve the parties’ legal obligations and that the commission’s factual findings are not conclusive, and therefore it does not offend the Constitution for the commission to issue them without jury involvement.
The fines at the centre of the case were part of nearly $200 million in penalties the FCC imposed after concluding that major US carriers had sold access to customer location data to third parties without securing user consent.
AT&T was fined $57 million, Verizon nearly $47 million, T-Mobile $80 million and Sprint $12 million. Both AT&T and Verizon paid their fines but pursued legal challenges that ultimately split the federal appellate courts, creating the conditions for Supreme Court review.
The case was the latest in a series testing whether federal agency in-house enforcement arrangements violate constitutional jury trial protections, following the court’s 2024 decision curbing the SEC’s power to pursue penalties through its own internal tribunal. The FCC’s victory draws a clear distinction between the two agencies, preserving the regulator’s ability to act swiftly against carriers without first pursuing enforcement through the courts.
FCC chair Brendan Carr said the commission would continue to hold companies accountable under the Communications Act.
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