The US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit on Friday denied Verizon’s petition to overturn a $46.9 million penalty related to sharing customer location data with aggregators without consent. The court held that the data qualifies as customer proprietary network information under the Communications Act, activating privacy protections.
Verizon argued the FCC’s decision was arbitrary and capricious and that the data were not protected under the law cited by the FCC. It also claimed the fine was excessive and violated its right to a jury trial under the Seventh Amendment, a point the judges rejected unanimously.
The court noted that Verizon elected to forgo a jury trial in federal court, and the forfeiture order was found to be within the act’s penalty cap and properly grounded in liability. It emphasized that the contested data — location information sold to aggregators who resold it to third parties — was shielded by statutory privacy protections.
The decision builds on FCC findings from the prior year, which fined T-Mobile, AT&T, and Verizon for sharing customer location data with data ‘aggregators’ such as LocationSmart and Zumigo without adequate consent safeguards. The FCC said the carriers failed to implement reasonable protections against unauthorized access and sale.
Separately, AT&T’s $57 million fine was overturned in part, while a separate DC Circuit ruling kept a T-Mobile appeal in place. The Verizon ruling preserves the line that location data can be protected, and regulator enforcement of privacy standards in the wireless sector remains active.
