The Supreme Court ruled 8-1 that the FCC's process for fining carriers does not violate the Seventh Amendment right to a jury trial, handing AT&T and Verizon a decisive loss in their bid to escape $104 million in penalties for selling users' real-time location data without consent.
The case existed because two circuit courts disagreed. AT&T won in the 5th Circuit last year, which would have gutted the FCC's ability to fine carriers entirely. Verizon lost in the 2nd Circuit. The Supreme Court took the case to resolve that split and reversed the 5th Circuit, with only Justice Clarence Thomas dissenting. The violations themselves date to 2018, the fines were issued in 2024, and the carriers paid up before challenging the process in court.
The ruling is worth reading in full because the Seventh Amendment argument, not the location data itself, was the actual legal battlefield. Carriers were not contesting whether they broke the law. They were contesting whether an administrative agency could punish them at all without a jury. That argument is now dead, and the implications for FCC enforcement authority going forward are significant.
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