Verizon loses Supreme Court bid to recover $47 million FCC fine

The US Supreme Court has denied Verizon’s petition to recover a $47 million fine paid to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), effectively ending the telecommunications carrier’s legal challenge. The decision, issued on 17 August, came without explanation, closing a chapter on one of the more significant privacy enforcement actions in wireless carrier history.

The fines were originally imposed in April 2024, when the FCC penalised four major carriers a combined $196 million for selling customers’ real-time location data to commercial aggregators without meaningful consent. The penalties were distributed as follows: T-Mobile paid $80 million, AT&T paid $57 million, Verizon paid $47 million, and Sprint paid $12 million. The enforcement action stemmed from data sales occurring between 2014 and 2019, which involved real-time GPS location data for more than 140 million wireless subscribers.

Verizon’s legal battle began with an argument that the FCC’s enforcement process violated the carriers’ Seventh Amendment right to a jury trial. In June, the Supreme Court ruled 8-1 against the carriers, holding that they could have refused to pay and forced the government to sue them to demand a jury. Following that loss, Verizon filed an additional petition arguing that the FCC had mischaracterised the nature of its forfeiture order to induce payment. The justices denied this final petition without comment, leaving Verizon with no further options in the fight.

AT&T, however, remains in the fight due to a different procedural path. Its case went through the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals rather than the Second Circuit. The Fifth Circuit initially sided with AT&T and vacated the fine, but the Supreme Court reversed that decision and sent the case back down. Crucially, the Supreme Court left open the question of whether AT&T was misled into paying the penalty immediately.

AT&T’s attorney, Pratik Shah, filed arguments at the Fifth Circuit on 7 August, pressing the point that the FCC’s actions required immediate payment. “The Commission’s every action culminating in its final forfeiture order required AT&T to pay the $57 million forfeiture immediately,” Shah wrote. “At the very least, the Court should order the Commission to issue AT&T a refund.” AT&T is also separately arguing that the location data at issue was not covered by the FCC’s authority under Section 222 of the Communications Act, a claim that could vacate the fine on the merits.

T-Mobile is also still contesting its $80 million penalty on a separate track, arguing that selling device-location data did not violate US telecommunications law. For Verizon, the $47 million loss is financially manageable given its recent second-quarter revenue of $34.3 billion and net income of $3.9 billion. However, the outcome permanently places the carrier on the wrong side of this specific regulatory dispute, while AT&T retains a real financial opportunity to recover its penalty.