\n<\/p>\n
The US supreme court backed the Federal Communications Commission\u2019s system for levying fines, ruling on Thursday against wireless carriers AT&T and Verizon in their challenge to the agency and handing a win to Donald Trump\u2019s administration.<\/p>\n
The ruling was 8-1. At issue in the legal dispute was whether the agency\u2019s in-house proceedings for imposing the penalties deprived the companies of their right to a jury trial under the US constitution. Trump\u2019s administration defended the FCC\u2019s system for assessing financial penalties, known as forfeiture orders.<\/p>\n
The conservative chief justice, John Roberts, authored the ruling. Clarence Thomas, a conservative justice, was the court\u2019s lone dissenter.<\/p>\n
The court embraced the Trump administration\u2019s argument that the FCC\u2019s in-house system does not stop parties from bringing legal challenges to the agency\u2019s assessments.<\/p>\n
The legal dispute marked the latest case to test whether a federal agency\u2019s internal enforcement arrangement violates the constitutional right to a jury trial after the supreme court in 2024 curbed the power of in-house proceedings at the Securities and Exchange Commission.<\/p>\n
The FCC fined AT&T $57m and Verizon nearly $47m after the agency concluded that the companies had unlawfully sold access to customer location data to third parties without securing the consent of users.<\/p>\n
In all, the FCC imposed nearly $200m in fines on carriers that it said failed to safeguard customer data. It fined T-Mobile $80m and Sprint, which T-Mobile acquired in 2020, $12m.<\/p>\n
Verizon and AT&T paid the fines they were assessed, but also filed legal challenges that eventually led to a split among regional US appellate courts over the lawfulness of the FCC\u2019s in-house procedure for imposing the penalties.<\/p>\n
In the government\u2019s defense of the FCC\u2019s in-house system, justice department lawyers had argued that the agency\u2019s assessments were not binding. If the government were to bring an enforcement action in court, it would allow the companies to make their case before a jury, the lawyers argued.<\/p>\n
The companies, for their part, said that the FCC\u2019s system impermissibly uses in-house proceedings for a process that belongs in court, depriving them of their right to a jury trial. The FCC\u2019s initial assessments, they added, inflict reputational harm before the accused have had their day in court.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The US supreme court backed the Federal Communications Commission\u2019s system for levying fines, ruling on Thursday against wireless carriers AT&T and Verizon in their challenge to the agency and handing a win to Donald Trump\u2019s administration. The ruling was 8-1. At issue in the legal dispute was whether the agency\u2019s in-house proceedings for imposing the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":50062,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[1348,303,16057,1535,160,4698,4369,159,3609],"class_list":{"0":"post-50061","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-backs","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-carriers","11":"tag-clash","12":"tag-court","13":"tag-fcc","14":"tag-fines","15":"tag-supreme","16":"tag-wireless"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50061","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=50061"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50061\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/50062"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=50061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=50061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=50061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}