Verizon, T-Mobile: Fifth Circuit Was Right to Strike Down AT&T Fine
Both carriers are fighting multi-million dollar fines of their own.
Jake Neenan
WASHINGTON, April 23, 2025 – As the carriers challenge multi-million dollar penalties of their own, Verizon and T-Mobile are telling judges the Fifth Circuit was correct to throw out a $57 million fine against AT&T last week.
“The Fifth Circuit’s decision is squarely on point,” Helgi Walker, an attorney representing T-Mobile, wrote in a letter to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. “This Court should vacate the forfeiture orders.”
In April 2024, the Federal Communications Commission fined the three major 5G carriers more than $200 million collectively for failing to properly vet third parties before selling customer location data in 2018. All three fought the fines in court.
The Fifth Circuit held the FCC’s forfeiture process violated the Seventh Amendment right to a jury trial, writing it was “guided” by a recent Supreme Court decision, SEC v. Jarkesy, that found the same was true of the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The D.C. Circuit heard oral arguments in T-Mobile’s challenge last month, and Verizon’s are scheduled for April 29.
All three carriers have argued the FCC’s forfeiture process is invalid under Jarkesy. The agency has countered that the companies could get a jury trial by simply not paying the fines, at which point the Department of Justice could start collection proceedings that involve a trial.
The Fifth Circuit sided with AT&T in part because companies can’t guarantee the DOJ will ever take them to court, and companies must pay any fines before filing their own suits challenging the legality of the penalties.
“The Fifth Circuit’s opinion supports Verizon’s Seventh Amendment arguments and rejects the FCC’s, which it also made to that court,” Scott Angstreich, an attorney representing Verizon, wrote to the Second Circuit.
Although the agency didn’t change its position after he took the helm in January, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr dissented from the fines when they came down. After the Jarkesy decision, he said the agency should “start the process of fundamentally reforming our enforcement practices.”
FCC Commissioner Nathan Simington, the other Republican at the agency, has for nearly a year voted against each agency forfeiture order, pledging to do so until the enforcement procedures were reviewed. He called for updating the agency’s process after the Fifth Circuit decision last week.
“For decades, Congress has tasked agencies like the FCC with enforcing specialized statutory regimes efficiently and consistently, relying on internal processes designed to reflect both legal standards and sector-specific expertise,” Damonta Morgan, an associate at Paul Weiss, wrote in a Yale Journal on Regulation article on the AT&T decision. “Of course, this decision makes that enforcement work much more difficult.”
