Federal Communications Commission v. AT&T, Inc.

The Seventh Amendment preserves the right to a jury trial in civil suits "at common law." For most of American history, if the government wanted to collect a fine from a private party, it had to go to court. The party could demand a jury. But over the last century, Congress has built an enormous administrative state where agencies assess fines, hold hearings, and enforce penalties without ever entering a courtroom.

The public rights doctrine has been the main justification. When Congress creates a new regulatory scheme -- workplace safety, environmental compliance, communications licensing -- it can assign enforcement to an agency. The theory is that these are rights created by Congress, not rights that existed at common law, so the Seventh Amendment does not apply. But monetary fines look a lot like the debt actions that juries have decided since the founding.

This case is part of a broader reckoning with the administrative state's adjudicatory power. The Supreme Court has recently shown increased skepticism of agency adjudication in SEC v. Jarkesy (2024), where it held that the SEC cannot impose civil penalties through administrative proceedings when the defendant would have had a right to a jury trial at common law. The FCC cases test whether that principle extends to communications regulation.

The FCC's position is that its forfeiture process is different from SEC enforcement actions, and that regulated companies have adequate options: they can refuse to pay and force the FCC to sue in federal court, or they can appeal the fine to a federal appellate court. But AT&T and Verizon argue these workarounds do not satisfy the Seventh Amendment, which guarantees the right to a jury in the first instance, not just on appeal.

The stakes extend far beyond the FCC. Dozens of federal agencies assess monetary penalties administratively. If the Court holds that the Seventh Amendment requires a jury trial before the government can impose fines on regulated companies, it could reshape administrative enforcement across the federal government. Agencies from the EPA to the FTC to OSHA would need to rethink how they collect penalties.

The case also implicates Article III -- whether Congress can assign what amounts to judicial work to executive-branch agencies. The more the Court limits agency adjudication, the more enforcement moves back to the federal courts, which are already overburdened. The practical question is whether the constitutional principle is worth the institutional cost.