Supreme Court Sides with Trump Admin on FCC Fines, Upholds Agency's Penalty System

The U.S. Supreme Court has sided with the Trump administration, ruling against wireless carriers in a battle over Federal Communications Commission fines.

In a ruling issued Thursday, the nation’s highest court backed the FCC's method for imposing financial penalties and rejected challenges from wireless giants AT&T and Verizon, which argued that the FCC's in-house proceedings violated their constitutional right to a jury trial.

The high court's decision was an 8-1 split, with conservative Chief Justice John Roberts authoring the majority opinion. The central legal question revolved around whether the FCC's internal process for assessing fines deprived companies of their Sixth Amendment right to a jury.

The court sided with the Trump administration's defense of the FCC's system, which contended that the agency's in-house procedures do not preclude parties from pursuing legal challenges to its assessments. Conservative Justice Clarence Thomas was the lone dissenter.

Chief Justice Roberts clarified the court's reasoning, stating, "Forfeiture orders issued (by the FCC) do not definitively resolve the parties' legal obligations." He further added, "And the commission's factual findings are not conclusive. It thus does not offend the Constitution for the commission to issue forfeiture orders without the involvement of a jury."

This legal battle emerged after the FCC levied substantial fines against several carriers for allegedly selling access to customer location data to third parties without user consent. AT&T was fined $57 million, and Verizon nearly $47 million. In total, the FCC imposed nearly $200 million in penalties on carriers for failing to safeguard customer data, including $80 million against T-Mobile and $12 million against Sprint, which T-Mobile acquired in 2020.

While Verizon and AT&T paid their respective fines, they also initiated legal challenges, leading to a divergence among regional U.S. appellate courts regarding the legality of the FCC's in-house penalty procedure.

The New York-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Verizon's fine, ruling that the Constitution permits initial penalty assessments as long as an accused party can challenge collection efforts in court. Conversely, the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found that the FCC's initial assessment of wrongdoing and a fine deprived AT&T of its constitutional right to a jury trial. These conflicting rulings prompted appeals to the Supreme Court.

Justice Department lawyers, defending the FCC's system, argued that the agency's assessments are not binding and that companies would have the opportunity to present their case before a jury if the government pursued an enforcement action in court. The companies, however, maintained that the FCC's system improperly uses in-house proceedings for matters that belong in court, thereby denying them a jury trial and inflicting reputational harm before they have their day in court.

This case marks the latest instance where the Supreme Court has examined whether a federal agency's internal enforcement mechanisms infringe upon the constitutional right to a jury trial, following a 2024 ruling that curtailed the power of in-house proceedings at the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The Supreme Court also issued a separate ruling in 2025 endorsing the FCC's funding mechanism for its multi-billion-dollar program aimed at expanding phone and broadband internet access for low-income and rural Americans.