VERIZON COMMUNICATIONS INC. v. FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
No. 24-1733
United States Court of Appeals For the Second Circuit
September 10, 2025
August Term 2024
Argued: April 29, 2025
24-1733-ag
Verizon Commc‘ns Inc. v. Fed. Commc‘ns Comm‘n
* The Clerk of Court is respectfully directed to amend the caption as set forth above.
Before: Lynch, Lee, and Nathan, Circuit Judges.
Verizon Communications Inc. (Verizon) petitions for review of a forfeiture order of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) imposing a $46.9 million penalty for violating
On appeal, Verizon argues that (1)
We conclude that device-location data is statutorily protected, that the FCC reasonably determined Verizon‘s liability, and that the forfeiture order neither violates the applicable statutory limits nor Verizon‘s asserted Seventh Amendment rights. Accordingly, we DENY the petition.
SCOTT H. ANGSTREICH (Aaseesh P. Polavarapu, on the brief), Kellogg, Hansen, Todd, Figel & Frederick, PLLC, Washington, D.C., for Petitioner.
SCOTT M. NOVECK, Counsel (P. Michele Ellison, General Counsel, Jacob M. Lewis, Deputy General Counsel, Sarah E. Citrin, Deputy Associate General Counsel, on the brief), for Respondent Federal Communications Commission;
Doha G. Mekki, Acting Assistant Attorney General, Robert B. Nicholson, Matthew A. Waring, Attorneys, on the brief, U.S. Department of Justice, Washington, D.C., for Respondent United States of America.
NATHAN, Circuit Judge:
In the wake of news reporting about Verizon Communications Inc.‘s (Verizon) mishandling of its customers’ location data, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC or the Commission) commenced an enforcement action against the company. Exercising its authority to pursue monetary forfeitures, see
Before this Court, Verizon challenges the forfeiture order on various grounds. Verizon first argues that the customer location data it was found to have mishandled is not statutorily protected because it does not satisfy the definition of customer proprietary network information. See
We disagree. The customer data at issue plainly qualifies as customer proprietary network information, triggering the Communication Act‘s privacy protections. And the forfeiture order both soundly imposed liability and remained within the strictures of the penalty cap. Nothing about the Commission‘s proceedings, moreover, transgressed the Seventh Amendment‘s jury trial guarantee. Indeed, Verizon had, and chose to forgo, the opportunity for a jury trial in federal court. Thus, we DENY Verizon‘s petition.
BACKGROUND
I. Legal Background
The Communications Act of 1934,
When Congress amended the Communications Act in 1996, it created a new framework to govern the protection and use of the information that telecommunications carriers obtain by virtue of providing such a service. Telecommunications Act of 1996, Pub. L. No. 104-104,
One such form of protected customer data is customer proprietary network information. This category of information is defined as “information that relates to the quantity, technical configuration, type, destination, location, and amount of use of a telecommunications service subscribed to by any customer of a telecommunications carrier, and that is made available to the carrier by the customer solely by virtue of the carrier-customer relationship.”
The FCC has issued regulations implementing
Congress authorized the FCC to enforce
Alternatively, under
II. Factual Background
Petitioner Verizon provides its customers with mobile-voice and data services through its wireless network. To enable a customer to make and receive calls and to transmit data, customers’ devices and a carrier‘s cell towers must regularly exchange information, which we refer to as “pinging” each other. Because carriers know the locations of their towers, and because customers typically carry their phones on their person or nearby, carriers like Verizon generally know their customers’ location at all times.
Until March 2019, Verizon, like many other carriers, ran a “location-based services” program that sold access to certain kinds of wireless customer location data. As part of that program, Verizon contracted with “location information aggregators,” which collected customer data and resold it to third-party location-based services providers. Verizon had arrangements with two aggregators, LocationSmart and Zumigo, which in turn contracted with 63 third-party entities.4 These entities purportedly used customer location data for six specific types of purposes or “[u]se [c]ases“: “call routing, roadside assistance, proximity marketing, transportation and logistics, fraud mitigation/identity management, and mobile gaming/lottery.” In re Verizon Commc‘ns, No. 24-41, 2024 WL 1905229, at *4 (F.C.C. Apr. 29, 2024) (quotation marks omitted).
Verizon did not itself provide notice and obtain or verify consent to access customer location data. Rather, it largely delegated those functions via contract. Verizon‘s contracts with the aggregators, for example, required that location-based services providers give notice and seek affirmative, opt-in consent before accessing customer information. And prior to joining the program, providers had to submit an application describing the company‘s intended use case and its notice-and-consent process. To verify that customers were indeed consenting to disclosure of their data, Verizon relied primarily on an external auditor, Aegis Mobile, LLC, which collected and matched customer location requests and consent events on a daily basis.5 Both sets
On May 10, 2018, the New York Times published an article reporting security breaches involving Verizon‘s (and other major carriers‘) location-based services program. According to the New York Times, a company called Securus Technologies, Inc. (Securus) was misusing the program to enable law enforcement officers to access location data without customers’ knowledge or consent, so long as the officers uploaded a warrant or some other legal authorization. But, as Verizon concedes, Securus had been approved for a different use case altogether. And because Securus did not actually review the documents that law enforcement personnel uploaded, a now-former Missouri sheriff, Cory Hutcheson, was able to access customer data with no legal process at all. Instead of providing warrants or other legal authorization, Hutcheson uploaded utterly irrelevant materials, such as “his health insurance policy, his auto insurance policy, and pages selected from Sheriff training materials.” Verizon Commc‘ns, 2024 WL 1905229, at *5 (quotation marks omitted).
The day after the New York Times article, Verizon terminated access to customer location data for both Securus and 3Cinteractive, the intermediary that had supplied Securus with the data by way of a contract with aggregator LocationSmart. Verizon also stopped approving any new participants or use cases. A month later, Verizon announced its intention to terminate the location-based services program altogether. But it did not stop selling customer location data to most (57) of its providers and the aggregator Zumigo until some six months later. And LocationSmart, together with four roadside-assistance providers, retained access to customer location data into 2019. In the meantime, the program continued to operate more or less as it always had.
Soon after the New York Times article, the FCC‘s Enforcement Bureau launched an investigation into Verizon‘s location-based services program. And in February 2020, the Commission issued Verizon a Notice of Apparent Liability for its apparent violations of
In that order, the FCC concluded that the location data disclosed through Verizon‘s location-based services program is protected as customer proprietary network information under
Verizon paid the penalty and filed a timely petition for review in this Court pursuant to
STANDARD OF REVIEW
Under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), we will generally overturn agency action only if it is “arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion,” or otherwise contrary to law.
We review constitutional questions and matters of statutory interpretation de novo. See Cablevision Sys. Corp. v. Fed. Commc‘ns Comm‘n, 570 F.3d 83, 91 (2d Cir. 2009); Loper Bright Enters. v. Raimondo, 603 U.S. 369, 394 (2024). “An agency‘s factual findings must be supported by substantial evidence, which means such relevant evidence as a reasonable mind might accept as adequate to support a conclusion.” Cablevision Sys. Corp., 570 F.3d at 91 (quotation marks omitted).
DISCUSSION
Verizon raises a number of challenges to the FCC‘s forfeiture order in its petition for review. On the statutory side of things, Verizon argues that
I. Scope of § 222
Verizon‘s first challenge to the forfeiture order concerns the scope of
Section 222(h)(1)(A) defines customer proprietary network information as including “information that relates to the quantity, technical configuration, type, destination, location, and amount of use of a telecommunications service subscribed to by any customer of a telecommunications carrier, and that is made available to the carrier by the customer solely by virtue of the carrier-customer relationship.”
Starting with the first prong of the analysis, both parties agree that Verizon‘s wireless-voice services are telecommunications services within the meaning of the statute. See
Verizon is mistaken. As explained above, a wireless carrier “must be aware of and use [a] device‘s location in order for it to enable customers to send and receive calls.” Verizon Commc‘ns, 2024 WL 1905229, at *8 (quotation marks omitted). Thus, customers’ devices and Verizon‘s cell towers regularly communicate to “ensur[e] that [customers] can receive incoming calls and place outgoing calls.” Id. at *9. That is true whether a customer is on a call or not, since the device must continuously maintain a connection to the carrier‘s network for any incoming call to be received. Accordingly, the device-location data of customers to whom Verizon is providing voice services clearly relates to the location where they are receiving the voice service. And so, it “relates to the . . . location . . . of a telecommunications service.”
Verizon suggests that this argument “ignores the record,” because to generate the location information that Verizon sold through its location-based services program, the company had to
“specially ping” a customer‘s wireless device, “separately from the normal course network communications” with that device. Reply
Verizon also draws on statutory context and legislative history to support its theory that
By way of background, when Congress enacted the Telecommunications Act in 1996, “location” was not included in the definition of customer proprietary network information. That was
added in 1999, along with other amendments to
Citing to the 1999 amendments and their legislative history, Verizon argues that these provisions show that Congress intended “location” in the definition of customer propriety network information to capture “call location information.” Pet. Br. at 34 (quotation marks omitted). And it maintains that embracing the contrary interpretation would lead to nonsensical results, since it would mean that (1) Verizon may, without consent, disclose call-location information to emergency service providers or immediate family in a life-threatening emergency, but not device-location information, and (2) only “express prior authorization” counts as consent for call-location information, but lesser forms of consent (e.g., a failure to opt out) could suffice for disclosing device-location information.
Even assuming that those results reflect contrary assumptions about the sensitivity of device-location data, Verizon‘s arguments
about congressional intent just as easily cut in the other direction. “Where Congress includes particular language in one section of a statute but omits it in another section of the same Act, it is generally presumed that Congress acts intentionally
As for the second prong of the
The Communications Act subjects communications services “to different regulatory regimes depending on how they are classified.” N.Y. State Telecomms. Ass‘n, 101 F.4th at 140. Entities providing “telecommunications services” are regulated as common carriers under Title II of the Act.
Against this backdrop, the crux of Verizon‘s argument is that the location data at issue here is not made available “solely by virtue of the carrier-customer relationship” because Verizon can obtain it even if a customer is not using or has not purchased the sole common-carrier service that Verizon provides: its mobile-voice services.
The core problem with Verizon‘s argument is that it assumes that the scope of the “carrier-customer relationship” in
To be sure, the Communications Act treats regulated parties as
common carriers only to the extent that they provide common-carrier services. See
In sum, we conclude that device-location data both “relates to the . . . location . . . of a telecommunications service” and is obtained “solely by virtue of the carrier-customer relationship.”
II. Liability Finding
In the alternative, Verizon contends that the FCC‘s determination that Verizon did not reasonably protect customers’ location data was arbitrary and capricious. “However, an agency‘s decision is arbitrary and capricious only if the agency has relied on factors which Congress has not intended it to consider, entirely failed to consider an important aspect of the problem, offered an
explanation for its decision that runs counter to the evidence before the agency, or is so implausible that it could not be ascribed to a difference in view or the product of agency expertise.” Safe Haven Home Care, Inc. v. U.S. Dep‘t of Health & Hum. Servs., 130 F.4th 305, 323 (2d Cir. 2025) (cleaned up). That was not the case here.
Verizon‘s challenge to this determination stems from its view that the Securus/Hutcheson disclosures were outlier occurrences that affected a small number of customers and do not speak to any broader systemic issues in its safeguards. Thus, Verizon argues, instead of reasonable measures, the FCC required perfect ones, imposing, without fair notice, a strict liability standard “contrary to the reasonableness standard” in the FCC rule. Pet. Br. at 40 (quotation marks omitted). At bottom, Verizon asks us to find that it was arbitrary and capricious for the FCC to refuse to infer the reasonableness of Verizon‘s safeguards based on the fact that only the Securus/Hutcheson breaches were publicly identified. But the Commission “reasonably considered the relevant issues and reasonably explained the decision” to reject that position. Fed. Commc‘ns Comm‘n v. Prometheus Radio Project, 592 U.S. 414, 423 (2021).
As to the period before the Securus/Hutcheson disclosures, the FCC considered the safeguards that Verizon had in place and reasonably found them wanting. In reaching this decision, the agency explained that Verizon relied heavily on a chain of contractual arrangements to satisfy its statutory and regulatory obligations. And it observed that, to enforce its contractual safeguards, Verizon‘s efforts “apparently mainly consisted of analysis of unverified vendor-created consent records” (through Aegis). Verizon Commc‘ns, 2024 WL 1905229, at *16 (quotation marks omitted). Specifically, Aegis‘s review consisted essentially of comparing the list of “location requests” provided by a location-based services provider with the list of purported “consent records” also provided by the provider, a system that “assumed that the location requests and consent records provided by the [providers] would be legitimate in the first instance” and could not detect if a provider fabricated the consent records. Verizon Commc‘ns, 35 FCC Rcd. 1698, 1719 (2020). A 2017 internal report, which warned Verizon that “it is possible for [providers] with delegated consent to falsify consent records and obtain [Verizon] subscriber data without their consent,” shows that the company was on notice of this possibility. Verizon Commc‘ns, 2024 WL 1905229, at *4 (quotation marks omitted) (second alteration in original).
The FCC also emphasized that although allegedly designed to monitor customer consents, Verizon‘s system was incapable of detecting customers’ lack of consent, since the Securus location requests expressly sought to obtain customer location data without customers’ approval. This was, in the agency‘s view, a “significant loophole.” Id. at *17. Verizon complains that its failure to identify the 11 customers whose data was improperly accessed by
The FCC examined the relevant factors and spelled out a reasonable basis to support its conclusion: it considered the full gamut of Verizon‘s safeguards and found that Verizon lacked a reliable means to enforce compliance with its contractual safeguards. That is sufficient on review for arbitrary and capriciousness. See Prometheus Radio Project, 592 U.S. at 423 (noting that “a court may not substitute its own policy judgment for that of the agency” on arbitrary and capricious review).
Second, and more importantly, as to Verizon‘s response to the Securus/Hutcheson breaches, Verizon again reiterates the measures it took in the wake of the New York Times article. But the FCC reasonably found those measures to be insufficient as well. As the Commission observed, the breaches put Verizon on notice that the third parties’ contractual promise to limit the use of location data alone failed to prevent its unauthorized use. And yet, Verizon continued to sell its customers’ location data under effectively “the same system” to 58 entities for over six months and to another five for over 10 months. Verizon Commc‘ns, 2024 WL 1905229, at *18.
The FCC acknowledged that Verizon immediately cut off 3Cinteractive and Securus, declined to allow access to location information for additional providers and use cases, and had Aegis review the vetting procedures and data analytics used. That said, the FCC observed that Verizon implemented only certain changes, requiring Aegis to “strengthen the transaction verification process to identify any anomalies in the data relating to consent requests that could indicate a potential issue, such as multiple location requests within a 24-hour period or an increase in location requests that were out of the ordinary” for a particular location-based services provider. Id. at *19 (quotation marks omitted). And it explained that nothing in the record indicated that “those particular measures were likely to have identified the problem that enabled the Securus and Hutcheson breaches in the first place,” including the failure to verify the validity of customer consent. Id.
The Commission identified “numerous steps that could have been taken to squarely address the proven vulnerability,” including steps short of terminating the program. Id. These steps included immediately suspending the access of LocationSmart, which was contractually obligated to monitor Securus and 3Cinteractive‘s access to Verizon customer data; meaningfully investigating whether the Securus incident was an isolated occurrence or indicative of
Verizon‘s remaining arguments are unavailing. The FCC‘s decision to provide a 30-day “grace period,” during which Verizon could have fixed the problems it identified or terminated the program without facing penalties, in no way belies its assertions regarding the seriousness of the flaws in Verizon‘s program. And the FCC order neither suggests that the only reasonable response would have been for Verizon to terminate the program within 30 days of learning of the New York Times article, nor otherwise imposes an “effective strict liability regime.” Pet. Br. at 40. So Verizon cannot complain of lack of fair notice on either front.
Accordingly, we find that the FCC‘s liability finding was not arbitrary and capricious.
III. Forfeiture Amount
Verizon next asserts that the forfeiture order violates the Communication Act‘s statutory limit on forfeiture penalties. We disagree.
In authorizing the FCC to assess forfeitures, Congress set maximum forfeiture amounts. As applicable here, the Communications Act caps the total per-violation forfeiture amount at approximately $200,000 for “each violation or each day of a continuing violation, except that the amount assessed for any continuing violation shall not exceed” approximately $2 million, as adjusted for inflation, “for any single act or failure to act” that violates the statute or FCC rules.
As previewed above, the FCC found that Verizon “engaged in [63] continuing violations—one for each ongoing relationship with a third-party . . . provider or aggregator that had access to Verizon customer location information more than 30 days after publication of the New York Times report—and that each violation continued until Verizon terminated the corresponding entity‘s access to customer location information.” Verizon Commc‘ns, 2024 WL 1905229, at *22. In challenging this result, Verizon and its amici contend that the FCC‘s findings support at most a “single
At the outset, the parties disagree as to the applicable standard of review. Verizon and its amici suggest that, after Loper Bright, we must assess this matter de novo, because whether Verizon‘s failure to take reasonable protective measures constitutes a “single act or failure to act” or many acts or failures to act is a question of statutory interpretation. Pet. Br. at 42 (quoting
Rather than defer to an agency‘s interpretation of a statute, “courts must exercise independent judgment in determining the meaning of statutory provisions.” Loper Bright, 603 U.S. at 394. Of course, “[i]n a case involving an agency . . . the statute‘s meaning may well be that the agency is authorized to exercise a degree of discretion.” Id. “When the best reading of a statute is that it delegates discretionary authority to an agency, the role of the reviewing court under the APA is, as always, to independently interpret the statute and effectuate the will of Congress subject to constitutional limits[,] . . . ensuring the agency has engaged in reasoned decisionmaking within [the] boundaries [of the authority delegated to it].” Id. at 395 (quotation marks omitted).
Here, although Verizon and its amici are correct that determining Verizon‘s total number of violations involves a question of statutory interpretation, they misidentify the relevant question. The Communications Act does not specifically articulate what qualifies as a “single act or failure to act.” Rather, the Act gives the Commission “the discretion” to determine when to issue a forfeiture penalty against a carrier.
Still, that conclusion does not resolve whether the FCC‘s determination that Verizon committed 63 continuing violations is unlawful. As we have explained, when a statute “delegates discretionary authority to an agency,” the role of the court, in addition to interpreting the statute, is to ensure that “the agency has engaged in reasoned decisionmaking” within the boundaries of the authority Congress has delegated to it. Loper Bright, 603 U.S. at 395 (quotation marks omitted). We conclude that the FCC acted within those boundaries when it determined that Verizon committed 63 continuing violations of the Communications Act.
Verizon may have had one overarching set of flawed policies, which insufficiently protected customer proprietary network information, but those policies were implemented through separate relationships with 63 different entities. Verizon approved and terminated each entity‘s participation separately. In the weeks following the Securus/Hutcheson disclosures, it had the choice of shoring up its demonstrably flawed safeguards or else cutting off access not just for Securus and 3Cinteractive but also for any one of the other entities that continued to receive customer location data without adequate safeguards. Its failure to take either of these paths means that each of its ongoing relationships represented an additional risk of security breaches. That is enough to render Verizon‘s decision to continue selling location data to 63 entities under essentially the same system that produced the Securus/Hutcheson disclosures 63 individual “act[s] or failure[s] to act.”
Verizon and its amici complain that the FCC‘s interpretation of the statute leads to absurd results. But it‘s Verizon‘s approach that makes little sense. In the course of securing customers’ data, a regulated party will make many decisions, which will in turn have various ramifications on any number of sub-decisions and any number of potential victims. As we have explained, Verizon made a series of decisions that had various consequences. For example: Verizon relied on a chain of contractual arrangements to satisfy its statutory and regulatory obligations, rather than satisfying those obligations directly itself. It insufficiently validated customer consent records and did not have a system in place that could detect a lack of customer consent. And it took few additional measures after the Securus/ Hutcheson breach to remedy the shortcomings in its data protection systems. See supra pp. 21–25. Considering that set of circumstances, we have little trouble concluding that the FCC acted within the boundaries of the discretion that Congress delegated to it when it concluded that Verizon committed 63 continuing violations.
Moreover, the purpose of the FCC‘s forfeiture penalties is to meaningfully deter and punish violations of the statute. Indeed, in setting the forfeiture amount, the FCC must consider several factors that “concern culpability, deterrence, and recidivism,” Sec. & Exch. Comm‘n v. Jarkesy, 603 U.S. 109, 123–24 (2024), such as the “gravity of the violation,” “the degree of culpability,” and “any history of prior offenses,”
Verizon and its amici‘s complaints of absurdity stem largely from the FCC‘s claim that the agency‘s approach was not only lawful but also “eminently conservative,” as it could have chosen to calculate the number of violations based on “the total number of Verizon subscribers“—“tens of millions“—“whose highly sensitive location information was made vulnerable by Verizon.” Verizon Commc‘ns, 2024 WL 1905229, at *26. But the legality of this methodology is not before us. And, in any event, finding in favor of the FCC here does not mean countenancing the imposition of a penalty in the hundreds of trillions.
To the extent amici also rely on United States v. WIYN Radio, Inc., 614 F.2d 495 (5th Cir. 1980), that decision does not bind our Court. But even if it did, the FCC‘s interpretation does not run counter to its holding. Indeed, that case focuses on the distinction between single and continuing violations and does not address when or whether the FCC might impose penalties for various continuing violations. See id. at 497 (holding that a licensee‘s failure to provide the required notice of a personal attack on a broadcast was not a repeated violation for which successive daily penalties could be exacted because the rule at issue imposed a “single, pointed duty” that “admitt[ed] of only a single dereliction” once the week-long period to give notice elapsed). Thus, we find that the FCC acted within the limits of its authority when it determined that Verizon engaged in 63 separate failures to implement a reasonable data-security regime in violation of
Finally, we conclude that Verizon forfeited on appeal any challenge to the FCC‘s upward adjustment of the forfeiture order amount. Before the Commission, Verizon brought a second objection to the size of the penalty imposed. It argued that the agency‘s 50% upward adjustment on top of the base forfeiture amount was unwarranted. See Verizon Commc‘ns, 2024 WL 1905229, at *23. But “we rely on the parties to frame the issues for decision” on appeal. United States v. Sineneng-Smith, 590 U.S. 371, 375 (2020) (quoting Greenlaw v. United States, 554 U.S. 237, 243 (2008)). And an appellant—or petitioner—who fails to raise an argument in his opening brief generally “forfeits” that argument. Tripathy v. McKoy, 103 F.4th 106, 118 (2d Cir. 2024).
Verizon did not mention the upward adjustment in its opening or reply briefs before this Court, and it did not raise any challenge to the upward adjustment at oral argument. Even after we ordered supplemental
While we note that the D.C. Circuit considered and rejected other carriers’ similar challenges to their large penalty amounts, see Sprint Corp. v. Fed. Commc‘ns Comm‘n, No. 24-1224, 2025 WL 2371009, at *15 (D.C. Cir. Aug. 15, 2025), those challenges were affirmatively raised before that court, see Pet. Br. at 67–69, Sprint Corp., 2025 WL 2371009 (No. 24-1224), 2024 WL 5097079, at *67–69. We thus decline to reach Verizon‘s here.
IV. Seventh Amendment
Verizon and its amici lastly contend that the FCC‘s decision to levy a forfeiture by way of its
The Seventh Amendment provides that, “[i]n Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved.”
We may assume for the sake of argument that Verizon has a Seventh Amendment right to trial by jury on the charges here. Nevertheless, there is no Seventh Amendment problem here, because Verizon could have gotten such a trial. The remedial structure of the Communications Act differs significantly from the securities statutes that the Supreme Court considered in Jarkesy. See 603 U.S. at 115–18 (explaining the remedial structure imposed by the three securities fraud statutes that were relevant to the disposition of the case). When the FCC imposes a forfeiture under
Verizon and its amici protest that the prospect of a § 504(a) trial does not satisfy the Seventh Amendment‘s demands because by the time of trial, “the Commission would have already adjudged a carrier guilty of violating section 222 and levied fines.” AT&T, Inc. v. Fed. Commc‘ns Comm‘n, No. 24-60223, 2025 WL 2426855, at *9 (5th Cir. Aug. 22, 2025). That argument is misplaced. Verizon essentially complains that, whereas, after Jarkesy, the SEC must file a civil complaint in federal district court to seek civil penalties for securities fraud, the FCC will begin a § 504(a) trial not with allegations of wrongdoing, but with a determination of liability. But the problem in Jarkesy was that the SEC could “siphon” its securities fraud claims away from Article III courts and compel payment without a jury trial. 603 U.S. at 135. The FCC‘s forfeiture order, however, does not, by itself, compel payment. The government needs to initiate a collection action to do that. See
Verizon and its amici also assert that a § 504(a) trial falls short of the Seventh Amendment‘s guarantee because Verizon would have needed to wait up to five years for the FCC to bring a collection action, during which time Verizon would suffer reputational and practical harms. See
Verizon and its amici‘s final challenge to the constitutional sufficiency of a § 504(a) trial concerns the scope of the trial itself.
Moreover, given the Supreme Court‘s recent decision in McLaughlin Chiropractic Associates, Inc. v. McKesson Corp., 606 U.S. 146 (2025), it is questionable whether Stevens remains good law at all. In Stevens, the Fifth Circuit reasoned that the district court lacked jurisdiction to consider legal challenges to the validity of a forfeiture order in a § 504(a) trial because
Accordingly, we conclude that, assuming Verizon has a Seventh Amendment right to a trial by jury, those rights were not violated because it had, but chose to forgo, an opportunity for a
CONCLUSION
For the foregoing reasons, the petition for review is DENIED.