Why the Supreme Court Just Handed the FCC a Major Privacy Enforcement Win

As Chief Justice Roberts wrote, “The Amendment requires only that, before legal rights and obligations are conclusively ‘ascertained and determined’... a party has the chance to insist that a jury make the ‘ultimate determination of issues of fact’” . Because the FCC’s scheme provides that eventual path to a jury, the Court found it constitutional.

Distinguishing SEC v. Jarkesy

To reach this conclusion, the Court had to carefully separate this case from its own precedent. The carriers leaned heavily on the Court’s 2024 decision in SEC v. Jarkesy, which reined in the Securities and Exchange Commission’s use of in-house tribunals for civil-penalty cases .

The Court ruled the two situations were not analogous. The SEC’s system allowed it to essentially adjudicate and enforce penalties in-house, without an initial path to an Article III court. The FCC’s forfeiture process, by contrast, is not self-executing. The Commission issues a forfeiture order, but it must turn to the judicial branch to make the penalty stick. This separation—where the agency accuses but cannot, by itself, compel payment—was the constitutional saving grace of the FCC’s system .

The Lone Dissenter: Justice Thomas’s Formalist Argument

Justice Clarence Thomas, the sole dissenter, offered a sharply different view. He argued the majority’s reasoning was a legal fiction. To him, the FCC’s order was not a mere suggestion. He noted that the Commission’s own regulations treat a forfeiture order as a penalty that is “required” to “be paid in full” by a specific date, and that the carriers face statutory penalties for noncompliance .

Thomas rejected the idea that the companies had a meaningful choice. He pointed out that AT&T and Verizon “paid under protest and filed suit to get their payments back,” and he accused the majority of “punish[ing] AT&T and Verizon for complying with a government order that they in good faith believed was obligatory” . For Thomas, the practical effect of the order was an immediate, coercive deprivation of property without a jury trial.

The $200 Million Fine Breakdown

The high-stakes constitutional fight was rooted in a massive privacy enforcement action. The FCC determined that the four major wireless carriers had failed to protect sensitive customer geolocation data from unauthorized access, effectively allowing it to be sold to third parties. The fines the FCC sought to levy were substantial :

• T-Mobile: ~$80 million
• AT&T: ~$57 million
• Verizon: ~$47 million
• Sprint: ~$12 million

Combined, the penalties totaled approximately $200 million, representing one of the largest privacy fines in FCC history .

The Path to the Supreme Court

Before reaching the high court, the cases took divergent paths through the federal appellate system, creating a circuit split that practically demanded the Supreme Court’s intervention.

• FCC Investigation: The action began with an FCC investigation into AT&T and Verizon over suspected violations of laws requiring them to keep customer location data confidential . The Commission issued notices of apparent liability and, after evaluating the companies' responses, finalized the forfeiture orders .
• A Circuit Split Emerges: AT&T and Verizon paid the fines under protest and challenged them in their respective regional circuits. The Fifth Circuit sided with AT&T, vacating the FCC’s order on the grounds that the in-house proceeding violated the Seventh Amendment by resolving factual and legal issues without a jury . The Second Circuit took the opposite view in Verizon’s case, upholding the fine by ruling that the FCC’s order did not itself compel payment and required a DOJ collection suit for enforcement .
• Supreme Court Resolution: The Supreme Court granted certiorari, heard oral arguments on April 21, 2026, and issued its consolidated decision on June 4, 2026. The Court reversed the Fifth Circuit, affirmed the Second Circuit, and decisively resolved the dispute in favor of the FCC's in-house forfeiture process .