AT&T, Verizon Insist to Supreme Court FCC Fine Orders are Binding

WASHINGTON, April 13, 2026 – AT&T and Verizon insisted to the Supreme Court Friday that Federal Communications Commission forfeiture orders were binding demands to pay fines. That, they wrote, puts the agency’s enforcement process in violation of the Seventh Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

The carriers are asking the high court to strike down the FCC’s fine authority, arguing the provision of the Communications Act that allows it is unconstitutional because it doesn’t honor the right to a jury trial. Justices will hear oral arguments in the case April 21.

The agency’s argument that its forfeiture orders are non-binding, and that companies can wait for a Justice Department collection action, which does include a jury, before paying was not convincing according to the carriers.

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“Come on. The orders demand payment in 30 days, and there is nothing voluntary about either the demand or the deadline,” the companies wrote.

The two providers said they “at the very least” wanted a refund on the more than $100 million they paid in the fines they’re challenging. The FCC levied penalties against AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile in 2024 after finding the major wireless carriers didn’t vet third parties thoroughly enough before selling them customer location data.

The Supreme Court ruled later that year in SEC v. Jarkesy that agencies needed to ensure a jury trial before collecting civil fines, providing the precedent the carriers are now pointing to.

If the Supreme Court sides with the FCC and finds its process passes constitutional muster by providing a jury trial before companies truly have to pay, then longstanding forfeiture order language declaring companies liable and demanding payment exceed FCC authority, the companies wrote. Thus the requested refund.

But the carriers would still prefer justices take their side rather than the government’s.

“It is a bizarre view for the United States to take: that when agencies finally adjudicate violations and impose penalties, regulated parties may simply ignore them,” they wrote. “Why fight so hard to preserve the FCC’s authority to issue these orders, if they do nothing?”

The FCC has told justices that the answer is that fines are the agency’s most important remedy when companies violate its rules.

“Eliminating them could mean that many vital rules – such as those protecting privacy, combating robocalls, and regulating broadcasting – go effectively unenforced,” the agency told the Supreme Court last month.

If financial penalties were off the table, the agency said it could come to rely more heavily on license suspensions or revocations, “all-or-nothing remedies” that the FCC said give companies fewer avenues to appeal but would ultimately “affect regulated parties far more substantially than forfeitures.”

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr , a commissioner at the time, dissented from the fines when they were handed down, but the agency has been defending its enforcement power under his leadership.

When each of the fined companies appealed, AT&T won its case in the U.S Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and Verizon lost its case in the Second Circuit.

T-Mobile, which lost its challenge to its fine in the D.C. Circuit, has urged the Supreme Court to side with AT&T and Verizon. Major telecom trade groups and conservative legal groups have also weighed in in support of the carriers. Consumer advocacy groups and former Democratic chairmen of the agency have supported the FCC.