On June 4, 2026, the Supreme Court held that the FCC can issue forfeiture orders without a jury, because the agency can’t make anyone pay until the government wins a new trial in federal court. The case involved two wireless carriers, but the same procedure governs robocall fines under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act. For a business that receives a proposed FCC fine, the ruling confirms a real choice between paying and contesting, and a company that waits for a collection suit keeps every defense it has.
What did the Supreme Court decide in FCC v. AT&T?
It decided that the FCC’s informal fine process doesn’t violate the Seventh Amendment right to a jury trial.
The FCC had fined AT&T and Verizon over their handling of customer location data. The Fifth Circuit vacated AT&T’s fine on jury-trial grounds, and the Second Circuit upheld Verizon’s, so the Supreme Court took both cases. Chief Justice Roberts wrote for eight Justices, and Justice Thomas dissented. The Court reversed the Fifth Circuit and affirmed the Second, according to the slip opinion in FCC v. AT&T, Inc., No. 25-406.
The core holding is short. The Court wrote that “Forfeiture orders issued under §503(b)(4) do not definitively resolve the parties’ legal obligations. And the Commission’s factual findings are not conclusive.” Payment is the whole point. In the Court’s words, “Before a regulated party can be made to pay, the jury gets the last word.”
The Court leaned on features of the statute that matter to any business with an open FCC matter. The FCC has no power to collect on its own order. The opinion states that “A recipient of a forfeiture order incurs no penalties for nonpayment, and interest does not accrue on the sum.” Collection runs through a civil suit in federal court, and the statute provides that “any suit for the recovery of a forfeiture imposed pursuant to the provisions of this chapter shall be a trial de novo,” under 47 U.S.C. § 504(a).
Why does a constitutional case about carriers matter to businesses that call?
Because TCPA fines run through the same two statutes.
The TCPA’s forfeiture provision says a person the FCC finds, “in accordance with paragraph (3) or (4) of section 503(b),” to have violated the autodialer and prerecorded-call rules is liable for a forfeiture penalty, and that “Any forfeiture penalty determined under subparagraph (A) or (B) shall be recoverable under section 504(a) of this title,” according to 47 U.S.C. § 227(b)(4). That’s the path the Supreme Court just examined.
Since the 2019 TRACED Act, the FCC can also skip the warning step for these violations. Section 227(b)(4) provides that “Paragraph (5) of section 503(b) of this title shall not apply in the case of a violation of this subsection,” which removes the citation a company without an FCC license would otherwise get first, as explained in the firm’s earlier post on TRACED Act penalties. A business can go from no contact with the FCC to a proposed fine.
The process starts with a Notice of Apparent Liability, which is a proposed fine, not a finding. The FCC must give the recipient a chance to “show, in writing,” why no penalty should be imposed, as the Court described § 503(b)(4). Only then does the agency issue a forfeiture order.
What are a business’s options after a forfeiture order?
Two, and the ruling makes the second one sturdier than many companies assume.
Pay and seek review in a court of appeals. The carriers in this case paid and then petitioned for review. That route gets a court ruling, but the opinion explains that the court of appeals reviews “the order on the administrative record” without a jury, under the Administrative Procedure Act’s deferential standards.
Don’t pay, and make the government sue. The FCC can refer an unpaid fine to the Department of Justice, which may or may not file a collection suit within a statutory time limit. If it does, the case starts over. For that trial, the Court wrote, “it is as if the Commission never found any facts at all.” A footnote in the same opinion adds that the trial de novo also covers the FCC’s legal conclusions, citing the Court’s 2025 decision in McLaughlin Chiropractic Associates v. McKesson Corp., which ended binding deference to FCC readings of the TCPA in district court.
Meanwhile the FCC can’t use an unpaid fine against the company in other FCC proceedings. Under 47 U.S.C. § 504(c), a notice of apparent liability can’t be used “to the prejudice of the person to whom such notice was issued” unless the forfeiture has been paid or a court has ordered payment in an order that has become final.
What the ruling doesn’t change
It doesn’t make a forfeiture order harmless. The order is public, and the Court rejected the argument that reputational harm alone triggers a jury right. The opinion also notes that the FCC may consider the facts behind an unresolved forfeiture in a later proceeding, though the company can contest those facts again.
It doesn’t touch private lawsuits either. A forfeiture order, paid or not, can show up as Exhibit A in a class complaint, and the facts a company admits in its written response to a Notice of Apparent Liability can be used there too. The response should be written with the private case in mind, because that’s where the larger exposure usually sits.
And it doesn’t stop the FCC from proposing large fines. The statute adds a penalty of up to $10,000 on top of the ordinary amount for a violation committed “with the intent to cause such violation,” under § 227(b)(4)(B), and the FCC counts violations call by call.
The practical point is that declining to pay and waiting for a collection suit is now a real option, not just a way to buy time. A company with good consent records and a defensible reading of the rules can decline to pay, force the government to prove its case to a jury, and argue the law from scratch. The trade-off is time and a public order that stays unresolved, so the choice should be made deliberately, not by default.
If a Notice of Apparent Liability arrives
- Put a litigation hold on the call records, dialer and platform data, and consent records for the campaigns the notice describes.
- Pull the internal do-not-call list and opt-out logs, with the dates each request was honored.
- Pull the National Do Not Call Registry scrub records and the registry version dates used for those campaigns.
- Collect vendor and lead-source contracts, call scripts, and any prerecorded or AI-voice message files.
- Talk to a lawyer before filing the written response, paying anything, or contacting the people who received the calls.
The written response is the moment to think about both fronts at once. The firm’s TCPA litigation defense page describes how agency matters and private class actions overlap.
Facing an FCC robocall fine?
If your company has received a Notice of Apparent Liability or a forfeiture order over prerecorded or autodialed calls, the response you file will follow the company into any private lawsuit. Rosenberger + Kawabata represents businesses defending TCPA lawsuits and class actions through its business litigation practice, including claims involving prerecorded sales calls. Contact Rosenberger + Kawabata online for a confidential consultation, or call (310) 894-6921.
Sources
The decision is FCC v. AT&T, Inc., Nos. 25-406 and 25-567 (U.S. June 4, 2026). The statutes are 47 U.S.C. § 227, 47 U.S.C. § 503, and 47 U.S.C. § 504. The deference case is McLaughlin Chiropractic Associates v. McKesson Corp., 606 U.S. 146 (2025).
This post is general information about the Telephone Consumer Protection Act and related laws as of October 4, 2026. It is not legal advice, and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. Courts and the FCC change the rules in this area often, and the outcome of any claim depends on its facts. Past results do not guarantee future outcomes.