The Supreme Court on Thursday rejected a constitutional challenge by Verizon and AT&T to more than $100 million in combined fines levied by the Federal Communications Commission, ruling 8-1 that the telecom giants had no right to a jury trial over the penalties. Only Justice Clarence Thomas dissented, and his objection deserves more attention than the majority opinion.
The case centered on FCC fines imposed after the agency found both companies had illegally shared access to customers' location data. The Hill reported that the investigation was spurred by reports that a Missouri sheriff was ultimately able to obtain some of that location data through a third party, a detail that raises its own troubling questions about how freely personal information moved through intermediaries before regulators stepped in.
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion. His reasoning hinged on the structure of FCC enforcement: because the commission's forfeiture orders are not binding, and because a company that refuses to pay can force a collection lawsuit, bringing the dispute before a judge and jury, Roberts concluded the process does not violate the Seventh Amendment's guarantee of jury trials in certain "suits at common law."
Roberts framed the FCC's enforcement mechanism as something short of a court judgment. The commission issues a forfeiture order, but that order does not carry the force of a final ruling. A company can decline to pay and wait for the government to sue to collect, at which point a federal court, and a jury, can hear the case.
Roberts wrote in the opinion:
"And the Commission's factual findings are not conclusive."
He added:
"It thus does not offend the Constitution for the Commission to issue forfeiture orders without the involvement of a jury."
That reasoning carried seven other justices. But the lone dissenter saw the matter very differently.
Justice Thomas argued that Verizon and AT&T did exactly what the legal system encourages: they complied with the government's order, preserved their objections, and then fought the fines in court. The majority's decision, in Thomas's view, punished them for playing by the rules.
Thomas wrote:
"AT&T and Verizon did what courts ordinarily encourage: They paid under protest and filed suit to get their payments back."
The Supreme Court has been at the center of intensifying political pressure from Democrats in recent terms, but this case cut along different lines. Thomas's concern was not partisan. It was procedural, and it pointed to a real trap built into the FCC's enforcement design.
Thomas noted that the companies had no way to guarantee, at the time they chose to pay, that a court would ultimately honor their right to a jury trial down the road. They paid under protest and litigated. They litigated well enough, Thomas observed, to cause the government itself to shift its position years later. And the Court's reward for that diligence was to deny them the very relief they had preserved.
His closing line carried real weight:
"Today, the Court punishes AT&T and Verizon for complying with a government order that they in good faith believed was obligatory, diligently preserving their objection to that order, and then litigating that objection so effectively as to cause the Government to change its position years later."
Strip away the telecom specifics and the stakes become clearer. The question is how much room federal agencies have to impose massive financial penalties on private companies without ever putting the facts before a jury. Roberts's answer: plenty, so long as the agency's order is technically not "binding" and the company can theoretically force a court fight later.
That distinction may satisfy a constitutional formalist. But for the company writing a nine-figure check, the practical difference between a "non-binding" order and a binding one can be hard to detect. The FCC fined Verizon and AT&T more than $100 million combined. Both companies paid. Both companies then challenged the fines. And the Court told them they should have refused to pay in the first place, and waited for the government to sue.
The ruling touches a broader tension that the Court has grappled with across multiple terms. The justices have weighed questions of constitutional protections in workplace disputes, federal-state conflicts over immigration enforcement, and the boundaries of agency authority. In each case, the underlying question is the same: how much power do unelected regulators hold, and what recourse do the people and companies on the receiving end actually have?
Thomas's dissent suggests the answer here is: less recourse than you'd think.
None of this means Verizon and AT&T deserve sympathy for the conduct that triggered the fines. The FCC found both companies illegally shared access to customers' location data. Reports that a Missouri sheriff obtained some of that data through a third party were enough to launch the investigation. Consumers whose location information was exposed had every reason to expect the government to act.
But the constitutional question was never about whether the companies deserved to be fined. It was about the process used to fine them. And on that question, eight justices said the FCC's process passes muster. Thomas said it doesn't, and his reasoning is harder to dismiss than the lopsided vote count might suggest.
The Court has not been shy about issuing consequential decisions this term. It recently greenlit Alabama's redrawn congressional map in a 6-3 ruling that carried major implications for redistricting nationwide. And it declined to hear Florida's challenge to states issuing commercial driver's licenses to illegal immigrants, another case where the Court's inaction carried real policy consequences.
Several details remain unclear from the record. The exact breakdown of fines between Verizon and AT&T individually has not been specified, only the combined figure of more than $100 million. The identity of the third party that allegedly facilitated access to customer location data is not public. The name of the Missouri sheriff whose actions triggered the FCC probe has not been disclosed. And the full case caption and docket number were not stated in available reporting, though the Supreme Court's opinion is publicly accessible.
What is clear is that the ruling gives the FCC, and by extension, other federal agencies with similar enforcement structures, broad latitude to impose heavy penalties through administrative proceedings, with the constitutional safety valve being a lawsuit that the company must essentially provoke by refusing to comply.
That is a lot of trust to place in a bureaucratic process. And if Thomas is right that companies who pay under protest and litigate in good faith can still lose their jury rights, the incentive structure is perverse: comply and lose your constitutional protections, or defy the agency and hope a court agrees with you before the penalties compound.
When the government can fine you $100 million and the only way to get a jury is to refuse to pay, the process may be technically constitutional. But it is not the kind of process that should make anyone comfortable about the balance of power between Washington regulators and the citizens they regulate.
