The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 8-1 on June 4 that the FCC's in-house forfeiture proceedings do not violate AT&T and Verizon's Seventh Amendment right to a jury trial. The case involved fines exceeding $100 million related to customer location data safeguards. Chief Justice John Roberts authored the majority opinion, with Justice Clarence Thomas dissenting.
The ruling preserves an efficient enforcement mechanism allowing regulators to hold telecom companies accountable for privacy violations without full federal court delays.
“Consumer privacy protections against corporate surveillance”
Conservative
The decision expands administrative agency authority at the expense of constitutional jury trial safeguards in proceedings involving substantial fines.
“Due process concerns and growth of the administrative state”
Libertarian
The outcome reinforces agency power to penalize firms through internal processes, bypassing traditional judicial safeguards on data-handling matters.
“Erosion of adversarial testing in court and risks of mission creep”
Devil's Advocate
All perspectives accept the premise that the carriers were proven violators, overlooking that the Court addressed only procedural jury rights and left liability open to contest.
“Procedural reality of non-final orders and unexamined settlement dynamics”