On June 4, 2026, the Supreme Court decided Federal Communications Commission v. AT&T, Inc., holding that the FCC’s issuance of forfeiture orders — i.e., administrative orders directing regulated parties to pay monetary penalties for violations of communications laws — without a jury does not violate the Seventh Amendment. The Court reasoned that, because forfeiture orders do not definitively resolve the parties’ legal obligations, and because the FCC’s factual findings in forfeiture proceedings are not conclusive, the Seventh Amendment does not require a jury at the administrative stage.
The Communications Act authorizes the FCC to investigate regulated parties for suspected violations of the communications laws and to seek monetary forfeitures. The Commission investigated cellular service providers AT&T and Verizon regarding their treatment of customer location data. After news reports revealed security breaches in the carriers’ location-based services programs, the Commission’s Enforcement Bureau launched an investigation into the carriers’ location-management practices. Believing that the carriers had violated laws and regulations requiring them to take reasonable steps to keep location data confidential, the FCC issued notices of apparent liability and subsequently issued orders assessing penalties of roughly $57 million against AT&T and $47 million against Verizon. The carriers paid these penalties and filed petitions for review in their respective Courts of Appeals, arguing that requiring forfeiture without the opportunity for a jury trial violates the Seventh Amendment. The Fifth Circuit granted AT&T’s petition and vacated the Commission’s order, while the Second Circuit denied Verizon’s petition. The Court granted certiorari and consolidated the two cases.
The Court held that the FCC’s forfeiture proceedings “fit comfortably within” its Seventh Amendment precedents. The Seventh Amendment “preserve[s]” the right to trial by jury in “[s]uits at common law” and requires only that — before legal rights and obligations are conclusively “ascertained and determined” — a party has the chance to insist that a jury make the “ultimate determination of issues of fact.” The Court explained that the forfeiture orders did not settle the carriers’ legal obligations because they did not create an obligation to pay. The statute “nowhere gives the Commission the authority to execute on a forfeiture order,” a recipient incurs no penalties for nonpayment, interest does not accrue, and under §504(c), the Commission cannot hold an unresolved forfeiture order against a regulated party. The orders also did not reflect the ultimate determination of any fact, because forfeitures under §503(b)(4) “shall be recoverable,” exclusively, in a “trial de novo,” meaning “for the purpose of a §504 trial . . . it is as if the Commission never found any facts at all.”
The Court distinguished SEC v. Jarkesy, 603 U.S. 109 (2024), where the Court found that the SEC’s imposition of civil penalties violated the Seventh Amendment, because those penalties were immediately enforceable, meaning the “ultimate determination of the facts giving rise to the obligation to pay rested not with a jury, but with the SEC alone.” In the Court’s view, the FCC’s orders, by contrast, do not determine legal rights and are simply a “prerequisite[] to suit” analogous to a right-to-sue letter — i.e., the kind of “preliminary procedures” to which the Seventh Amendment does not extend.
Finally, the Court held that the carriers were not impermissibly coerced into forgoing their right to a jury because §504(c) prohibits the Commission from using unresolved forfeiture proceedings to a regulated party’s prejudice and because the uncertain prospect of reputational harm does not “improperly ‘discourag[e] the exercise’” of the jury right.
Chief Justice Roberts delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Justices Alito, Sotomayor, Kagan, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett, and Jackson joined. Justice Thomas filed a dissenting opinion.
