{"id":234066,"date":"2026-04-21T15:04:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-21T19:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/21\/supreme-court-seems-wary-of-limiting-federal-regulators-power-in-a-data-privacy-case-2\/"},"modified":"2026-04-21T17:30:28","modified_gmt":"2026-04-21T21:30:28","slug":"supreme-court-seems-wary-of-limiting-federal-regulators-power-in-a-data-privacy-case-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/21\/supreme-court-seems-wary-of-limiting-federal-regulators-power-in-a-data-privacy-case-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Supreme Court seems wary of limiting federal regulators\u2019 power in a data privacy case"},"content":{"rendered":"

Supreme Court seems wary of limiting federal regulators\u2019 power in a data privacy case<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/wtop.com\/business-finance\/2026\/04\/supreme-court-seems-wary-of-limiting-federal-regulators-power-in-a-data-privacy-case\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Publish Date: 2026-04-21 15:04:00<\/a><\/p>\n

Source Domain: wtop.com<\/a><\/p>\n

WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 The Supreme Court seemed wary of limiting the power of federal regulators on Tuesday in a case\u2026<\/p>\n

WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 The Supreme Court seemed wary of limiting the power of federal regulators on Tuesday in a case over multimillion-dollar penalties levied against telecommunications giants Verizon and AT&T. <\/p>\n

The cellular companies appealed to the justices after the Federal Communications Commission found they sold customers\u2019 location data without proper safeguards. The FCC slapped the companies with hefty penalties totaling over $100 million.<\/p>\n

The telecom companies challenged the process as unconstitutional because it gives them little opportunity to tell their side of the story in court. Key justices seemed skeptical, however. \u201cI wonder if, at the end of the day, you\u2019re really just talking about a PR problem,\u201d Chief Justice John Roberts said. <\/p>\n

In arguments Tuesday, the Trump administration defended the penalty as an essential regulatory tool that does leave a path to court. Still, the companies appear to have scored a legal point when the government said companies don\u2019t have to pay immediately after getting a forfeiture notice, Justice Brett Kavanaugh said. \u201cIt seems like you\u2019ve won on the law going forward one way or the other,\u201d Kavanaugh told an attorney for AT&T and Verizon. <\/p>\n

The Supreme Court\u2019s conservative majority has limited the power of federal agencies before, including overturning a decades-old decision that had given regulators an advantage in court and stripping another agency of a major tool in fighting securities fraud. A victory for AT&T and Verizon in this case could have widespread effects for other agencies who use similar enforcement mechanisms, advocates said. <\/p>\n

Companies who get notices that they\u2019ve run afoul of FCC regulations now have two options: pay the penalty…<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Supreme Court seems wary of limiting federal regulators\u2019 power in a data privacy case https:\/\/wtop.com\/business-finance\/2026\/04\/supreme-court-seems-wary-of-limiting-federal-regulators-power-in-a-data-privacy-case\/…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":234067,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/wtop.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Supreme_Court_56589-scaled.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-234066","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-privacy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234066"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=234066"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234066\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":234068,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234066\/revisions\/234068"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/234067"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=234066"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=234066"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=234066"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}