United States: Supreme Court upholds FCC fine process in AT&T privacy case
The Supreme Court said the FCC can keep issuing forfeiture orders without a jury in telecom privacy cases, preserving a key consumer-enforcement tool.
The Supreme Court on June 4, 2026, kept a key Federal Communications Commission enforcement tool in place, ruling that the agency can issue forfeiture orders without first giving telecom companies a jury trial in this kind of case. The decision matters far beyond one dispute over AT&T and Verizon because it preserves a federal penalty process the FCC can use in privacy and consumer-protection matters nationwide.
The case grew out of FCC fines tied to customer location data. In 2024, the agency announced penalties of more than $57 million against AT&T and almost $47 million against Verizon as part of a broader action involving wireless carriers and how they handled sensitive location information. The Supreme Court did not decide whether every privacy allegation was right or wrong. It focused on how the FCC can enforce its rules.
What the Court decided
The Court said FCC forfeiture orders do not violate the Seventh Amendment in this setting because they do not definitively resolve the companies’ legal obligations and they do not themselves create a debt the government can immediately collect. The opinion also said the orders are only a prerequisite to a later collection suit, and that any collection case would be tried de novo if the government pursued payment.
That distinction is the heart of the ruling. The FCC can keep issuing the order without a jury in the administrative phase, but a company still has room to fight before money is collected. In other words, the Court preserved the agency’s process without expanding it into a new power.
Why it matters for consumers and companies
For consumers, the ruling keeps the FCC’s complaint-and-penalty system available as a tool for policing how telecom companies handle sensitive information. That includes customer location data, one of the most privacy-sensitive categories in the communications business. If the FCC believes a carrier mishandled that data, the agency still has a path to impose and defend a penalty.
For telecom companies, the message is straightforward: the FCC’s enforcement threat remains real. The Court did not decide whether AT&T or Verizon violated privacy rules, and it did not create a blanket rule for every federal agency. It simply preserved the FCC’s existing forfeiture process against this Seventh Amendment challenge.
What to watch next: whether the FCC uses this authority more aggressively in future privacy and consumer-protection cases, and whether companies shift their legal attacks to other arguments instead of the Seventh Amendment issue the Court just resolved.
