When communications carriers like AT&T and Verizon violate the law, the Communications Act of 1934 authorizes the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to impose forfeiture orders and provides a pathway for regulated entities to challenge those orders via jury trial in federal court. AT&T and Verizon, after receiving forfeiture orders relating to their protection of consumer data, argued that this two-stage enforcement process violates their Seventh Amendment right to a jury trial. The Fifth Circuit agreed and the Second Circuit disagreed; both cases are now consolidated before the Supreme Court. In March 2026, CAC filed an amicus brief at the Court in support of the FCC, explaining why the agency’s enforcement scheme is constitutional.

First, historical practice confirms that enforcement schemes featuring an initial legal determination followed by a post-determination jury trial are not novel and satisfy the Seventh Amendment.

Congress has designed a broad range of civil-enforcement schemes that feature post-determination jury trials similar to the FCC’s. In the Founding era, for example, Congress permitted government officers first to seize property or collect bonds from regulated parties, with a jury trial on the merits occurring only after the seizure or bond collection. In the nineteenth century, Congress passed a law under which D.C. justices of the peace could issue binding decisions without a jury, which could later be appealed to a court with a jury. And when Congress created the Interstate Commerce Commission in the 1880s, it let the agency impose financial penalties on carriers, which were subject to later collateral challenge before a jury. These regimes all feature an initial legal determination made without a jury followed by later access to a full jury trial. None was thought to offend the Constitution: one was created by the same Congress that proposed the Seventh Amendment and the Supreme Court upheld the latter two against Seventh Amendment challenges.

Second, the Communications Act’s provision for a post-determination jury trial satisfies the Seventh Amendment. Under § 504(a), a regulated party can refuse to pay an FCC forfeiture order and instead wait for the debt to be referred to the Department of Justice for recovery. In that recovery action, the merits of the FCC’s forfeiture order are examined de novo before a jury. Because the Act ensures that Verizon and AT&T could have opted not to pay any imposed penalty at all until and unless it were confirmed by a jury verdict in federal district court, the FCC’s enforcement scheme does not violate the Seventh Amendment right to a jury trial.