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A three-judge panel at the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has rejected T-Mobile's appeal to get its $92 million FCC fine overturned.
The FCC found last year that the carrier and its subsidiary, Sprint, had illegally sold customers' real-time location data to third-party data aggregators. In its appeal, T-Mobile claimed the agency violated the Seventh Amendment by not providing it with a jury trial and misinterpreted the Communications Act during its investigation. The judges, however, found no merit in those claims and upheld the FCC fine.
"Neither denies what happened. Instead, they argue that the undisputed facts do not amount to a violation of the law," the ruling states. "Because the Carriers' arguments lack merit, we deny the petitions for review."
In an extended explanation, the ruling states that the Communications Act requires carriers to protect the confidentiality of customer proprietary network information (CPNI), including certain location information. But, until 2019, Sprint and T-Mobile kept selling customer location information (CLI) to third-party aggregators, who in turn, resold the data to companies that delivered location-based services. This was correctly identified as a violation of the Communications Act, according to the judges.
As far as the Seventh Amendment is concerned, "the Carriers chose to pay their fines and to seek direct review in this court. They thereby 'waived' the jury trial that was 'available' to them," the ruling adds.
The FCC had also fined AT&T ($57.3 million) and Verizon ($46.9 million) for similar violations. In total, the three companies were fined almost $200 million, and all of them filed separate appeals. Surprisingly, AT&T, which made similar arguments, got its fine overturned by the Fifth Circuit court in April. Verizon, on the other hand, has yet to receive a ruling.