🍿 Supreme Court Drops Jaw-Dropping 8-1 Ruling — Trump Says He’ll … See more

The carriers contended that this process deprived them of a constitutional safeguard guaranteed in civil cases involving substantial financial penalties, ARSTechnica noted further.

Writing for the Court’s majority, Chief Justice John Roberts rejected that argument, concluding that the companies were not denied access to a jury trial because an alternative path remained available to them.

According to the Court, the carriers could have refused to pay the fines and forced the government to pursue collection efforts, a process that ultimately could have resulted in a jury trial.

“The FCC’s forfeiture proceedings fit comfortably within” the Supreme Court’s Seventh Amendment precedents, Roberts wrote.

“The orders at issue did not settle the carriers’ legal obligations because, stated simply, they did not create an obligation to pay,” he went on.

“And the orders did not reflect the ultimate determination of any fact because, before the carriers could have been made to pay, the Government was required to prove its case to a jury,” said the chief justice.

The outcome was foreshadowed during oral arguments, where several justices appeared unconvinced by AT&T’s and Verizon’s constitutional objections and suggested that FCC penalty orders do not become legally binding until a court is asked to enforce them.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh notably suggested that the carriers had already secured an important concession from the government.

He noted that federal officials acknowledged FCC penalty orders are not self-executing nonbinding sans a jury trial.

“It seems like you’ve won on the law going forward, one way or the other,” Kavanaugh told the attorney representing the carriers, per ARSTechnica.