The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit (Fifth Circuit) has vacated the FCC’s forfeiture order assessing a $57 million fine against AT&T. The Fifth Circuit concluded that the Commission’s “in-house adjudication” violated the Constitution by denying AT&T its Seventh Amendment rights to a jury trial and to adjudication by an Article III court. In the forfeiture order, the FCC had concluded that AT&T violated section 222 of the Communications Act by disclosing its customers’ location information without their consent and without taking reasonable measures to protect that information against unauthorized disclosure.
