Supreme Court Takes Case That Could Strip FCC of Authority To Issue Fines (arstechnica.com) 49
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The Supreme Court will hear a case that could invalidate the Federal Communications Commission's authority to issue fines against companies regulated by the FCC. AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile challenged the FCC's ability to punish them after the commission fined the carriers for selling customer location data without their users' consent. AT&T convinced the US Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit to overturn its fine (PDF), while Verizon lost in the 2nd Circuit and T-Mobile lost in the District of Columbia Circuit. Verizon petitioned (PDF) the Supreme Court to reverse its loss, while the FCC and Justice Department petitioned (PDF) the court to overturn AT&T's victory in the 5th Circuit. The Supreme Court granted both petitions to hear the challenges and consolidated the cases in a list of orders (PDF) released Friday. Oral arguments will be held.
In 2024, the FCC fined the big three carriers a total of $196 million for location data sales revealed in 2018, saying the companies were punished "for illegally sharing access to customers' location information without consent and without taking reasonable measures to protect that information against unauthorized disclosure." Carriers challenged in three appeals courts, arguing that the fines violated their Seventh Amendment right to a jury trial. [...] While the Supreme Court is only taking up the AT&T and Verizon cases, the T-Mobile case would be affected by whatever ruling the Supreme Court issues. T-Mobile is seeking a rehearing in the District of Columbia Circuit, an effort that could be boosted or rendered moot by whatever the Supreme Court decides.
In 2024, the FCC fined the big three carriers a total of $196 million for location data sales revealed in 2018, saying the companies were punished "for illegally sharing access to customers' location information without consent and without taking reasonable measures to protect that information against unauthorized disclosure." Carriers challenged in three appeals courts, arguing that the fines violated their Seventh Amendment right to a jury trial. [...] While the Supreme Court is only taking up the AT&T and Verizon cases, the T-Mobile case would be affected by whatever ruling the Supreme Court issues. T-Mobile is seeking a rehearing in the District of Columbia Circuit, an effort that could be boosted or rendered moot by whatever the Supreme Court decides.
What in the .... (Score:5, Interesting)
Stripping the FCC of being able to levy fines renders the department pointless.
Woohoo! PIRATE RADIO EVERYWHERE!
Re: What in the .... (Score:2)
I'm mixed about that. On the one hand, Janet Jackson's boob wouldn't be finable. On the other hand, misusing spectrum could go unpunished.
Though in this case, this feels a bit out of scope for the FCC. I think it's worth having a separate three letter agency dedicated to consumer privacy. Would otherwise be an FTC thing but they're already busy with a lot of shit.
Re:What in the .... (Score:5, Insightful)
Stripping the FCC of being able to levy fines renders the department pointless.
If SCOTUS upholds, it won't remove the fines, it will just require them to take you to court, then get the court to levy the fines.
This isn't completely silly. They're basically pointing to the fact that various executive branch agencies have been doing legislative and judicial things, making rules and judging when/how those rules apply. Justice Kagan gave some interesting history about that in the recent Trump v Slaughter hearing [youtube.com]. She made the point that we've made a kind of a deal with ourselves over much of the last century, allowing Congress to delegate legislative and judicial power to executive agencies, with a couple of caveats.
The first is that the agencies are restricted to making rules and adjudicating issues only within the narrow scope of authority granted by Congress (e.g. the FCC should only make and enforce rules about communications, specifically about the use of the airwaves). The second is that the agencies are somewhat independent, meaning the president has very limited ability to tell them what to do. These caveats maintain a separation of powers. It's not the same separation of powers that is described in the Constitution, because the Constitution separates powers by function (legislative vs judicial vs executive) whereas the "deal" separates powers by subject matter. So the FCC has been exercising legislative, judicial and executive powers, all three, but only within their scope. The FCC can't do anything about, say, fishing, or mining, or tax collection.
This is all arguably unconstitutional, especially with respect to judicial power, because Congress can't delegate what it doesn't have... but it works. It gives the agencies the powers they need to do their job effectively, and it also prevents any one person or organization from collecting all of the powers of all of the agencies in one place, because concentrating that much power in one place is dangerous, and specifically what the authors of the Constitution wanted to avoid. So you can quite legitimately say that it violates the letter of the Constitution, but is very much in line with the spirit.
In hindsight, it's really unfortunate that we never amended the Constitution to make it explicitly allow and codify such an alternative separation-of-powers strategy, but we didn't.
Now, we have a president who wants to exercise direct control over all of those disparate, mostly-independent agencies. This is why the argument about whether or not the president can fire the heads of independent agencies is a huge deal, because if he can then he can exercise direct control over all of them, gathering all of their disparate powers to regulate, well, everything, into one pair of hands.
That's what Slaughter is about; whether the president can directly control all of these quasi-independent agencies.
This is about another aspect of the same thing: Can the agencies adjudicate the rules they make, or do they need to go to court every time? If they win, this will actually undermine Trump's goal in Slaughter, because it will take power away from the agencies and give it to the judicial branch, power that he is trying to gather up for the presidency. Well, for himself.
It will also seriously undercut the ability of the agencies to do anything by making applying regulations vastly slower and more expensive. At least, that's what it will do when the targets are big corporations with plenty of money to fight those legal battles. When the targets are small companies or individuals without such deep pockets, it won't have much effect, except maybe to force those small targets to pay lawyers as well as fines.
Woohoo! PIRATE RADIO EVERYWHERE!
Sure, if you can afford protracted legal battles against the federal government. And if you win.
After 40 years of Court packing (Score:3)
And people pay fines all the damn time without involving the courts. There is decades of precedence for that.
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"people pay fines all the damn time without involving the courts"
Presumably by pleading guilty on the summons? But if they have the right to plead not guilty and have their day in court, then there's no problem with that.
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By this logic, the local police shouldn't be able issue speeding tickets. Maybe this is what you think, but forcing this will make enforcing traffic laws extremely inefficient and impractical. (You can challenge traffic tickets in court if you disagree with it - and you can do the same with the FCC. So the courts are involved if needed.)
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By this logic, the local police shouldn't be able issue speeding tickets
Nonsense.
The police issue citations, but they're enforced by courts. Oh, people often choose just to pay them rather than going to court, but the ticket is actually a summons.
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If SCOTUS upholds, it won't remove the fines, it will just require them to take you to court, then get the court to levy the fines.
Will this also then apply to say the police and speeding tickets? Because its the same principle - you only go to court if you don't accept the fine.
Re:What in the .... (Score:4, Insightful)
"It violates the letter of the Constitution, but is allowed by the spirit" is toxic to rule of law. Everyone who wants to violate the Constitution can claim that what they are doing is consistent with the spirit, because the spirit is a vague thing that it's easy to talk your way around.
It's like saying the Constitution allows freedom of speech, but clearly the spirit of the law is that it shouldn't include harmful speech, even though they "forgot" to actually write that in.
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"It violates the letter of the Constitution, but is allowed by the spirit" is toxic to rule of law.
I agree. We should have amended the Constitution.
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This scouring of restrictions is not for you. The harmless will still pay a price. It's only the malevolent, greedy, and powerful that will escape oversight.
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America selectively enforces laws. It's a big club and you ain't in it...
Maybe we shouldn't have let corporations take over the supreme Court but hey, egg prices were pretty high so what were we supposed to do? And how about her emails?
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If you think tragedy of the commons is a viable alternative, I suggest you start, right now, driving in the 'wrong direction' on the highway.
After all, they are so frikkin wrong, how dare they.
Good (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Good (Score:4, Insightful)
So would the FCC send over a US Marshal to write a ticket?
Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)
> not a law-enforcement agency.
They aren't enforcing laws. WTF.
Ofc, the FCC is being singled out among the CFPB, CPSC, NHTSA, HUD, HHS, FEC, FTC, and the rest of the federal regulatory/licensing bodies. The FCC is being singled out while bribery is still in fashion, not because there's some sort of legal framework to support it. What's more, stripping this ability would further erode the ability to regulate other industries. If the FCC can't fine for violating their own statues, how long before the HHS can't fine for their own statutes (ie HIPPA violations). This would be a very bad no good change in policy.
Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)
The FCC is whatever Congress says they are. Congress says they have the power to levy fines, just like the FAA, FTC, and lots of other similar agencies.
If Congress says that, and there's no constitutional issue (there isn't), SCOTUS can go fuck itself. It won't because it's been on a power kick lately, but that's yet another reason to fire SCOTUS when a sane administration is put in office.
Re:Good (Score:4, Informative)
The FCC is whatever Congress says they are. Congress says they have the power to levy fines, just like the FAA, FTC, and lots of other similar agencies.
It's actually not that clear. There are two problems.
First, Congress can't just delegate anything it wants. There have been a few Supreme Court opinions on this, going back to the Founding era, but the basic principle is called the "Non-Delegation Doctrine" and it says that Congress can't just delegate big chunks of its authority to the executive branch. Congress must set the general policy and framework and can delegate limited rulemaking authority within that scope.
Second, Congress can't delegate the power of the Judicial branch at all, because that's not Congress' power to give away. And that's what this is about. When the FCC defines rules, it's legislating, hopefully within the bounds of what Congress delegated (and is allowed to delegate). When the FCC adjudicates the application of those rules, that's judging, and Congress is completely unable to delegate judicial powers.
Justice Kagan explained this quite clearly [youtube.com] in the recent Trump v Slaughter hearing. I wrote more about it here [slashdot.org], but in a nutshell we've kind of invented a different way of separating powers, one that is arguably necessary, but isn't allowed by the literal text of the Constitution, and we never amended the Constitution to allow it. Everyone just sort of agreed that although it violated the letter of the Constitution, it was in accord with the spirit of the Constitution, and it was necessary. Now that's being challenged, in multiple cases.
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It fits (Score:5, Insightful)
Republicans have been working to strip regulatory agencies of their power for a few years now. These agencies irritate the mega corps and we certainly can't have that.
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If your desire to strip the executive branch of powers changes based on who is in power, you are probably a conservative. They have no deeply held convictions which cannot be quickly changed when someone else is in charge. Does the deficit matter? Easy, just ask them who is in the White House. Obama? The sky is falling! Trump? I have never heard of this "deficit" nor of "inflation"!
If you believe the govt needs congress to represent the voters, and executive agencies to calm the changing tides of pop
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If you believe the govt needs congress to represent the voters, and executive agencies to calm the changing tides of populism so that the govt can improve the lives of everyone not just an excitable but dim group of voters energized by some recent (mis)information, you are probably a liberal. They want the govt to help people even if their guy is not in charge at the moment.
Good point. The lives of Trump voters have not gotten any better. Inflation is up and so are grocery prices. Tariffs are making everything cost more. Manufacturing jobs that pay enough to support an entire family haven't sprung up either.
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Republicans have been working to strip regulatory agencies of their power for a few years now.
It's interesting -- in an abstract, analytical way, ignoring the very real mess this may all make -- that this attempt to strip regulatory powers from agencies works against Trump's attempt to gather direct control of all of those agencies. If both efforts are successful, then Trump will have gained for himself and future presidents direct, unrestricted control of all of the power of all of the executive agencies, at the same time much of that power has been taken away from them. More here [slashdot.org].
Law is pretty darn specific. (Score:5, Insightful)
Title V of the Communications Act of 1934 provides the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) with the statutory authority to enforce its regulations through monetary penalties, criminal sanctions, and asset seizures.
Its as if our entire government has forgotten how our entire government is supposed to work.
If you don't like the law, you amend the law, or pass a new one. The current system of "Everybody with enough money appeal to the supreme court for exceptions" just erodes the law until only a couple of companies own everyth- Oh. I see. NM.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
How are the new model Winnebagos? Asking for a supreme court buddy...
Re: Law is pretty darn specific. (Score:5, Funny)
He drives a luxury coach. How dare you imply that a Winnie is good enough for him.
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Looks like the laws been around for 92 years without being declared unconstitutional - I find it a bit ... odd that it could suddenly be declared unconstitutional, even after 92 years of being in force.
In other words, there should be a period of time after which it cant be challenged on constitutional grounds IMHO.
Re:Law is pretty darn specific. (Score:4, Insightful)
Looks like the laws been around for 92 years without being declared unconstitutional - I find it a bit ... odd that it could suddenly be declared unconstitutional, even after 92 years of being in force.
In other words, there should be a period of time after which it cant be challenged on constitutional grounds IMHO.
Roe v. Wade was around for about 50 years ... Nothing is "settled law" or reliable precedence with this SCOTUS. Alito pulled some BS from 1600s English common law to support his case (agenda) against Roe v. Wade. Didn't "we" fight a war to not be subject to British law? /s
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Looks like the laws been around for 92 years without being declared unconstitutional - I find it a bit ... odd that it could suddenly be declared unconstitutional, even after 92 years of being in force.
In other words, there should be a period of time after which it cant be challenged on constitutional grounds IMHO.
That makes sense, and there kind of is such a policy, it's called "stare decisis", and it means that courts honor the rulings of their predecessors. Unfortunately, it's a guiding principle, not a hard and fast rule, and the current SCOTUS has shown themselves willing to abandon it whenever convenient.
That said, this structure that we've used since The New Deal is pretty plainly unconstitutional according to the plain text of the Constitution. More here [slashdot.org].
Re:Law is pretty darn specific. (Score:4, Funny)
Its as if our entire government has forgotten how our entire government is supposed to work.
Well... half doesn't like how it works anyway. Which may be why they're apparently happy giving all the/their power to one person who likes to rule, probably illegally, by fiat.
Steal, get caught, cry (Score:2)
These companies steal our privacy, sell it, and then cry foul when they are caught. Fuck you AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile. Fuck .. you.
If the government can't issue fines (Score:4, Insightful)
Then what is the point? The companies can do whatever they want with our data? Location data is pretty darn sensitive, and then we have what? No option to communicate without companies selling you out?
If this falls through it will be a significant loss, and a sure bet that corporations have too much power.
Re: If the government can't issue fines (Score:2)
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You spotted the administration's end game. Well done. Although in fairness it's not well hidden.
Economics (Score:4, Insightful)
It's simple economics. The corporations would rather pay a few million in bribes to the Trump regime and his SCOTUS minions than a few tens of millions in fines.
They are looking out for their shareholders. /s
Seventh Ammendment (Score:2)
The real point is the power of corporations (Score:2)
Everyone missed the point: Which law says Corporations have a right to a jury? This is pretending they can do everything people do. But they can't: they can't go to prison, they can't be executed, they can't pay taxes on their entire income, they can't be stopped at the national border.
A trial by jury also means the no-fault fine disappears: A court conviction means the corporation has committed a crime. If US courts truly believe corporations are people, then they must apply the same the level of p
IMHO (Score:2)
Regulation in the US is done badly. The agencies are government-run, which means that whoever is in power essentially decides on what the rules are that week, which is no way to run a regulatory body.
Regulations should be consistent, stable, and updated only as necessary and not with every election. And that means taking things like the FCC (and the FAA) out of government hands entirely. Nor should they ever be run by those with a vested interest, so frankly I'd rip the RIAA and MPAA from industrialists as
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The BBC has never been run by the government but had the power to regulate and fine. And used it.
British Telecom has never been run by the government (the prior organisation, the GPO, was but BT was not) but had the power to regulate and fine. And used it.
These were public corporations. The BBC still exists as a corporation by right of charter. That is to say, the government has never had any meaningful say in their governance but rather could set down in their charter (just a fancy contract) what a public
They should be careful... (Score:2)
...what they wish for.
ANY jury would have awarded their victims BILLIONS or dollars, not millions.... because we're ALL sick of this greedy bullshit.
But, I guess just like children, corporations have to FAFO... aka learn the hard way.
Now with more profanity (Score:2)
So if they rule that they can't enforce fines does that mean they can't enforce fines for profanity on broadcast air waves? If so then the religious right is going to lose it when they just start dropping F bombs on whatever is the cultural touchstone on TV right now. Disney might keep ABC clean, but NFL players are just going to start cussing when they are interviewed and such.