(Sprint v. FCC, No. 24-1224)

On August 15th of 2025, the United State Court of Appeals has issued its decision on the highly controversal anti-privacy activities from Sprint and T-Mobile.

For the basic background, the FCC has investigated and found that Sprint Corporation, a carrier service provider, has been selling their customers’ location data indiscriminately to anyone who has the appetite.

If you’re interested, here’s a minimalistic break down of the decision. All information are derived directly from the document, with my external interpretation/editorial:

Preliminary

• The court acknowledges that every cell phone is a tracking device.
• Their connection to the nearest cell tower is a necessary condition for the continuous operation of cellular connection.
• Because of this fundamental mechanism, your cell tower connection history becomes an exhaustive map of your whereabouts, Customer Location Information (CLI), and this “provides an intimate window into [that] person’s life”
• Congress recognized the highly sensitive nature of this data. Thus, addendumed to the Communications Act to impose a stricter privacy standard for customer’s location.
• This is a legal requirement to protect the sensitive data, “a duty to protect the confidentiality”. 47 U.S.C. § 222(a).
• Mobile carriers, in most circumstances, cannot share that information with third parties the customers’ consent. 47 U.S.C. § 222(c)(2).
• There also exists an implementing regulation to further require carriers to take “reasonable measures” to protect CLI from unauthorized acess by third parties. 47 C.F.R. §64.2010(a).
• All of this together, establish clear and concise protection for your Customer Propriatery Network Information.

Quick Facts

• Sprint and T-Mobile has been selling CLI to third parties for years.
• Within the terms of their deal, Sprint and T-Mobile require their buyers to obtain customer consent.
• But in actuality, the buyers bypassed the consent requirement. Sprint and T-Mobile obliged their end of the service without verifying that customer consent was ever acquirred.
• This opened the gateway to bad actors, abusing this lack-luster program to access CLI without the customers’ knowledge or consent.
• After Sprint and T-Mobile became aware of the abuses, they continued to sell CLI without implementing new safeguards.
• Because of this, they were fined by the FCC for $92 million.

Summary of Issue

• This case examines whether the two carriers — Sprint and T-Mobile — violated their outlined durty to protect the confidential information. 47 U.S.C. § 222(a).
• Sprint and T-Mobile appealed to the District Court, affirming that the facts above are not in dispute.
• What they dispute though, however, is that the facts above do not amount to a violation of the law.
• They offered the following arguments:
  • The Commission (FCC) misinterpreted the Communications Act.
  • The Commission miscalculated the penalties.
  • The Commission violated the Seventh amendment by not affording them a jury trial.
• Because the aforementioned argumetns lack merit, the appeal was denied.

Basis for Jurisdiction

• “Court will only approve petition for review from an order by the Commission if it is ‘arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance with law’” Star Wireless, LLC v. FCC, 522 F.3d 469, 473 (D.C. Cir. 2008) (quoting 5 U.S.C. § 706(2)(A)).
  • Before this (before the multiple remediation by the Supreme Court) courts were bound by the FCC decision. Meaning whatever the Commission says goes. Unless appropriately contested timely and appropriately.
  • Post [Loper Bright Enters] has eliminated the Chevron Defense (a defense that binds the court’s ruling to the Commission’s interpretation, with exceptions).
  • Court can now independently resolve issues of constitutional law and statutory interpretation de novo (assessment from the beginning)
  • BUT, when reviewing a claim of arbitrary or capricious from the Commission, the Court is allowed to be “highly deferential” (they tend to favour the Comission). Nat’l Lifeline Ass’n, 983 F.3d at 507.
    • Unless the Commission has made a clear error in their judgement, the Court will presume the agency acted validly.
    • “We “presume[] the validity of agency action and must affirm unless the Commission failed to consider relevant factors or made a clear error in judgment.” Id.(quoting Cellco P’ship v. FCC, 357 F.3d 88, 93–94 (D.C. Cir. 2004)).”

Basis for Denial

The Constitutional Violation Claim

• The Carriers claim the Commission violated the Seventh Amendment by assessing civil penalties against them (Sprint and T-Mobile) without affording them a jury trial — a violation of their 7th Amendment¹;

• The statutory procedure allows the Carriers for a jury trial before suffering legal consequences. Thus, the constitutional guarantee claim is moot, because the Carriers had the right to a jury trial either way. They [The Carriers] waived that right. How did this happen?
  • When the Commission issued a notice of apparent liability to them, they had 2 options:
    1. They could pay the fines and petition for a review in a court of appeals;
    2. They could do nothing and wait to be formally served with a complaint, they would then be “entitled to a trial de novo in district court”. Action for Children’s Television, 59 F.3d at 1261.
• The Carriers chose the former option. They paid the fines and now are petitioning their case in court, claiming that they can’t have their cake and eat it too. “Moreover, this argument relies on the road not taken” – Quote of the week.

The Other Constitutional Claims

• The Carriers claim it “offends the separation-of-powers principles and due process” for the Comission to act “as rulemaker, investigator, prosecutor, judge, and jury”.
  • But they then concede that both the Supreme Court and the present venue affirms the power of an agency. Withrow v. Larkin, 421 U.S. 35, 58 (1975); see also In re Zdravkovich, 634 F.3d 574, 579 (D.C. Cir. 2011)
    • They then claim that the afore-cited cases are “ripe for reconsideration”. However, “only the Supreme Court can overrule its own precedent” Agostini v. Felton, 521 U.S. 203, 237 (1997).²
• They offered 2 other contentions, but those were quickly extinquished, and not worthy of mention.

The Misinterpretation Claim

• BINGO! We can’t have a Commission ruling challenge without at least one Misinterpretation/Authority Overreach claim.
  • The Carriers tried to redefine their role and CPNI to escape the definitional requirement of the statute.
  • Information qualifies as CPNI under the Communication Act must:
    • Relate to the intimate details of use of a user.
    • Achieved through the carrier-customer relationship.
  • For the first qualification, they “urged an unnatural reading of the requirement”. In which, even the court obliged, would still fail under the new interpretation. They then framed themselves as more than just a carrier, since they are also an information-service providers;
    • Because they offer both voice calls and internet data to customers, when they obtain their customers’ location, it is.. technically.. not because of the carrier-customer relationship (but also the internet-provider-customer relationship).
• The Court did not buy their alternative interpretations, striking down the final argument.

Conclusion

Although the concept of your location data for sale sounds atypical, however, it is extremely real. There will be contrarians, or rather, privacy-nihilists, countering this celebration with unobjectionable disclaims such as: Who cares if they know where I’m going? Who cares if they know I eat McDonalds 5 times a week? Who cares if they know where I live? Why bother to care at all?

Principle and Privacy

Indeed, a giant conglomerate brokering your metadata might not be the end of the world. It might not pose any real sense of danger, and it might never meaningfully impact your life. But why? Why let them? You wouldn’t want your neighbour intruding your personal life, what’s so different about these carriers?

It’s also a dangerous slippery slope. Today it might be Amazon advertising toilet papers because you accidentally complained outloud while your Alexa Assistant is in the room. Tomorrow it could be your stalker, purchasing your information through a Business-to-Consumer data brokerage schematic.

And to those who couldn’t care less about their purchasable privacy, what about your rights? We live in a country where our rights are expressly enumerated. They are more than just words on a 300 years old parchment; they are the very principle of freedom, the necessary warranty of liberty itself. An intrusion of this kind is not just about knowing knowing where you live, it is a deliberate affront to your rights. You should feel the weight of that insult when someone exploits your freedoms for profit.

Source

https://www.fcc.gov/document/brief-respondents-sprint-corp-v-fcc

1. Did you know?
   The Seventh Amendment guarantees you a jury trial, not just to common law claims, but to ALL CLAIMS THAT ARE LEGAL IN NATURE. Granfinanciera, S.A. v. Nordberg, 492 U.S. 33, 53 (1989) ↩︎
2. “You miss 100% of the shot you don’t take” ahh argument. ↩︎