Overview
- The Supreme Court on Monday denied Verizon’s request for rehearing of its case without explanation, effectively leaving the Second Circuit’s judgment against Verizon intact and foreclosing its route to recoup the roughly $47 million forfeiture.
- The FCC imposed the forfeiture in 2024 after finding Verizon’s program shared customer device‑location data with third‑party aggregators and failed to keep that information confidential.
- In June the high court ruled 8‑1 that the FCC’s forfeiture process does not violate the Seventh Amendment because carriers could have refused to pay and forced the government to sue to collect, and Justice Clarence Thomas was the lone dissenter.
- Verizon says it paid the fine under protest after the FCC initially presented the order as binding and has argued it was misled, while AT&T and T‑Mobile continue separate appeals that challenge whether device‑location data falls under Section 222 protections.
- The dispute centers on what counts as customer proprietary network information, how carriers sold data to firms like LocationSmart and Zumigo, and the potential consumer and regulatory consequences if courts disagree across circuits or rule for carriers.