The Federal Communications Commission’s attempt to penalize AT&T and Verizon for the unauthorized sale of real-time user location data has reached the Supreme Court, but the resulting legal debate is less about privacy than the mechanics of administrative power. The carriers, facing $104 million in combined fines, argue that the FCC’s internal adjudication process violates their Seventh Amendment right to a jury trial. It is a challenge to the very structure of how federal agencies enforce rules without first stepping into a courtroom.
During oral arguments this week, however, the justices expressed a notable skepticism toward the carriers' claims of being "deprived" of a trial. The consensus emerging from the bench suggests that the FCC’s fines are, in a sense, optional until a court says otherwise. Justices pointed out that if a company simply refuses to pay a forfeiture order, the government must then file a civil suit to collect. That lawsuit, by its nature, provides the jury trial the companies claim they are being denied.
This leaves the regulatory landscape in a curious position. Even if the Supreme Court rules against the telecoms, the case has clarified that FCC fine decisions are essentially nonbinding suggestions until a judge intervenes. A government lawyer even suggested the agency might rewrite its orders to make this lack of immediate finality explicit. For the regulated, it is a reminder that the "fine" is often just the beginning of a much longer, and more traditional, legal process.
With reporting from Ars Technica.
Source · Ars Technica
