• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, April 18, 2025

Siding with AT&T, a federal appellate panel threw out a $57 million privacy fine imposed by the Federal Communications Commission, ruling that the agency's move violated AT&T's right to a trial by jury.

“No one denies the Commission’s authority to enforce laws requiring telecommunications companies like AT&T to protect sensitive customer data,” 5th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Stuart Duncan wrote in a 20-page decision.

“But the Commission must do so consistent with our Constitution’s guarantees of ... a jury trial,” Duncan added.

Judge Cory Wilson signed on to Duncan's opinion, but the third panelist, Judge Catharina Haynes, concurred only with the judgment.

The ruling comes in a battle that began during the first Trump administration, when the FCC -- then under Republican leadership -- proposed fining AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile for allegedly sharing customers' location data with third parties.

Specifically, the FCC said in a “notice of apparent liability” that the carriers sold access to geolocation data to aggregators that resold the information to outside companies.

The FCC initially proposed the fines in 2020 -- around two years after it came to light that a Missouri sheriff used geolocation data provided by Securus Technology to track other law enforcement officers, without court orders. Securus obtained the location data from the phone carriers. Around one year later, Vice Media's Motherboard detailed how a journalist was able to pay a “bounty hunter” $300 to track a phone's location to a neighborhood in Queens.

The major U.S. carriers have said they no longer sell location data.

Last year, the FCC followed through on the notice of apparent liability and fined AT&T around $57 million, Verizon around $47 million, and T-Mobile $92 million (including $12 million for Sprint, which merged with T-Mobile in 2020).

The agency voted 3-2 to impose the fines, with Republican commissioners Brendan Carr and Nathan Simington dissenting.

All three wireless carriers appealed the fines.

AT&T argued the penalty should be vacated for several reasons, including that the FCC imposed sanctions without proving the allegations in court.

The 5th Circuit agreed, noting that the Supreme Court ruled last year that defendants in civil securities fraud cases brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission were entitled to jury trials.

T-Mobile and Verizon have made similar arguments to different appellate courts -- the D.C. Circuit in T-Mobile's case, and the 2nd Circuit in Verizon's. Those cases remain pending.