Supreme Court Hears FCC Privacy Fines Jury Trial Case

The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments on Tuesday in a case challenging the Federal Communications Commission's authority to impose fines on major wireless carriers for violating customer privacy rules, raising questions about the constitutional right to a jury trial in administrative enforcement actions.

At issue are nearly $200 million in penalties the FCC finalized in 2024 against AT&T, Verizon Communications, T-Mobile and Sprint, following investigations into the companies' handling of customer location data. The agency determined that the carriers sold access to this sensitive information to third-party aggregators without obtaining proper user consent, allowing unauthorized entities to obtain location details on tens of millions of consumers. Specific fines included $57 million against AT&T, nearly $47 million against Verizon, $80 million against T-Mobile and $12 million against Sprint, which T-Mobile acquired in 2020. The violations stemmed from practices in 2018 and 2019, when the companies shared location data for services like roadside assistance, leading to incidents such as a Missouri sheriff accessing data on hundreds of individuals, including a judge, without...