The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit (D.C. Circuit) has affirmed 2024 FCC fines of $80 million and more than $12 million against T-Mobile and Sprint (Carriers), respectively, for providing to third parties access to customers’ location information without their consent. The D.C. Circuit rejected the Carriers’ arguments that the FCC forfeiture process violates the Seventh Amendment right to a jury trial and that the customer real-time location data involved in the breach was not covered by the FCC’s rules. This ruling creates a circuit split with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which previously vacated a Commission forfeiture order fining AT&T more than $57 million for violating CPNI protections.
