Cybersecurity Policy Report, Refunds Sought by Carriers in FCC Privacy Cases, (Jul 6, 2026)

By Paul Kirby

Verizon Communications, Inc., and T-Mobile US, Inc., want courts to issue them refunds of fines imposed by the FCC for violations of the agency’s CPNI (customer proprietary network information) rules.

The Supreme Court, in an 8-1 decision, last month upheld two FCC forfeiture orders against AT&T, Inc., and Verizon Communications, Inc., for violating CPNI protections by providing location data to third parties without customers’ consent (CPR, June 4). The cases were combined as FCC et al. v. AT&T, Inc. (case 25-406).

Verizon has submitted a petition for rehearing with the Supreme Court asking it “to make a small change to the bottom-line judgment at the end of its opinion, which currently strips Verizon of the options that the body of the opinion purports to leave open.”

“A tiny dispositional change—affirming, but with a remand—would put Verizon on equal footing with AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint, and permit Verizon to ask the Second Circuit to take up the issue that this Court purported to leave open (and that the government itself told this Court would be appropriate for a remand).

“Accordingly, Verizon respectfully requests that this Court grant the petition for rehearing and modify its disposition from ‘affirm’ in No. 25-567 to ‘affirm and remand for proceedings consistent with this opinion.’ This revised disposition would ensure that Verizon has the opportunity to ask the Second Circuit to consider whether the ‘specific forfeiture order[] in this case misled [Verizon] into paying, and [whether] a refund is therefore appropriate.’”

In a petition for a writ of certiorari, T-Mobile (and its Sprint LLC subsidiary) have asked the Supreme Court to “grant this petition, vacate the judgment, and remand for further proceedings (GVR) in light of this Court’s decision and the government’s significant legal concessions in AT&T. AT&T worked a historic shift in FCC forfeiture law. While the Court rejected the carriers’ constitutional challenges to the FCC’s forfeiture authority, it did so only because it accepted major legal concessions by the Office of the Solicitor General, including that: (i) the FCC lacks authority to issue forfeiture orders compelling payment, as the orders here purported to do; and (ii) regulated entities may lawfully decline to pay forfeitures and still raise all factual and legal challenges in a de novo jury trial under 47 U.S.C. § 504(a), contrary to the government’s prior positions and the holdings of lower courts. AT&T further memorialized the government’s admission that FCC forfeiture orders cannot mislead a regulated entity into waiving its jury-trial right by paying the forfeiture—exactly what happened here.

“A GVR is appropriate to allow the [D.C. Circuit] court of appeals to reassess its decision and the underlying forfeiture orders, including petitioners’ right to a refund, in light of this Court’s opinion and the government’s concessions in AT&T,” the petition added.

Alternatively, according to the petition, “this Court should grant plenary review. The decision below raises two important and recurring questions about the FCC’s authority under the Communications Act of 1934 that warrant review and were not presented in AT&T.”

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