WASHINGTON, DC – Following oral argument at the Supreme Court this morning in Federal Communications Commission v. AT&T and Verizon v. Federal Communications Commission, a case in which the Court is considering whether the FCC’s two-stage civil-enforcement process violates the Seventh Amendment, Constitutional Accountability Center Senior Appellate Counsel Smita Ghosh issued the following reaction:

Like many corporations subject to federal regulation, AT&T and Verizon seek to broaden the Supreme Court’s 2024 ruling in SEC v. Jarkesy to make it harder for agencies to seek penalties for violations of federal statutes. In response, many justices expressed skepticism about extending Jarkesy to a situation where a regulated company can have a trial by jury before paying a penalty to a govenrment agency. As Justice Kavanaugh said, “when the government seeks a penalty, it seems like as long as you get a de novo jury trial, the Seventh Amendment is satisfied.”

CAC Appellate Counsel Joshua Blecher-Cohen added this reaction:

Questions from the Court today touched on earlier Supreme Court cases like Meeker that considered the scope of jury rights in executive-branch enforcement. As CAC’s amicus brief in this case explained, looking at the history of such enforcement—including examples from the Founding and from the Interstate Commerce Commission, the first modern regulatory agency—confirms that the FCC’s two-stage enforcement scheme preserves the Seventh Amendment’s “right of trial by jury.”