Supreme Court rejects Verizon's bid for $47 million refund of FCC fine

The US Supreme Court has rejected Verizon's attempt to recover a $47 million fine it paid to the Federal Communications Commission. The petition was denied without explanation in a list of court orders, effectively closing off Verizon's path to ask a lower court to review the fine.

The fine was part of a combined $196 million penalty the FCC imposed in 2024 on Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile for selling customers' real-time location data without their consent. The carriers had sold the data to aggregators, who resold it to other companies. All three paid their fines but went to court arguing the penalty process violated their Seventh Amendment right to a jury trial.

Earlier ruling against carriers

In June, the Supreme Court ruled 8-1 against the carriers, with Justice Clarence Thomas dissenting, finding that the FCC's fine process does not violate the right to a jury trial since carriers could have obtained one by refusing to pay and waiting for the government to pursue collection.

In its new petition, Verizon argued it believed it had no choice but to pay, since the FCC initially presented the fine as binding before changing its position. Verizon noted that, unlike AT&T and T-Mobile, which still have avenues to challenge the fines on their merits in other appeals courts, it has no such option because the Supreme Court affirmed the Second Circuit's ruling without further instruction.

Data-sale legality still disputed

The Second Circuit had already unanimously rejected Verizon's separate argument that the law's privacy protections cover only call-location data, not device-location data. The court noted Verizon sold data to aggregators LocationSmart and Zumigo, which passed it on to 63 third parties, and that the data had previously been misused by law enforcement without proper legal process.

AT&T and T-Mobile are still pursuing rulings that could overturn their fines, arguing the location-data protections apply narrowly. A win for either carrier could limit future FCC chairs' ability to penalize similar data sales.