The US Supreme Court rejected Verizon Communications Inc.’s attempt to recover $47 million after it paid an FCC fine tied to a privacy-related enforcement action, according to Bloomberg and Ars Technica. Ars reports that the court denied Verizon’s petition without explanation in an orders list issued Monday. The decision appears to close Verizon’s requested route to a lower-court review that could have led to a refund, Ars reports. Bloomberg similarly characterized the order as the court refusing to let Verizon try to recoup the $47 million it paid after being accused by the FCC of privacy violations. The dispute traces back to FCC fines issued in 2024 over carriers’ handling of mobile location information. Ars reports that AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon were fined a total of $196 million for selling users’ real-time location data without customer consent. According to Ars, the carriers sold device-location information to data aggregators, which then resold it to other firms. Verizon’s latest loss follows a broader constitutional challenge to the FCC’s penalty process. Ars reports that AT&T and Verizon argued their Seventh Amendment right to a jury trial had been violated after they paid their fines and sought to overturn them in court. The Supreme Court ruled against the carriers in June of this year, holding that the FCC process did not violate the Seventh Amendment because the carriers could have refused to pay and waited for the government to sue to collect, at which point they could have sought jury trials. Ars reports the ruling was 8–1, with Justice Clarence Thomas dissenting. After that loss, Verizon sought another opening. Ars reports that Verizon argued it had understood the FCC’s 2024 forfeiture order as binding, while the FCC later described such orders as not compelling payment. Verizon’s position, as summarized by Ars, was that the court had left the merits of the fine unresolved while leaving Verizon without a practical path to argue that the fine itself was not legally justified. The procedural posture is uneven across the carriers. Ars reports that AT&T can continue challenging its fine because the Supreme Court remanded its case to the US Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, which had previously ruled in AT&T’s favor. T-Mobile and its Sprint subsidiary, according to Ars, lost in the District of Columbia Circuit in 2025 and are asking the Supreme Court to review their case. Verizon, by contrast, lost in the 2nd Circuit and argued that it had no path to reopen its case after the Supreme Court’s disposition. For Verizon, the dollars are not financially material at the company scale. Ars notes that Verizon reported Q2 2026 revenue of $34.3 billion and net income of $3.9 billion. The more important issue is procedural and regulatory: whether a paid FCC forfeiture can be reopened after the Supreme Court has already rejected the carrier’s broader challenge to the agency’s penalty process. The remaining fights are not over. Ars reports that AT&T and T-Mobile still maintain that selling device-location data did not violate US telecom law. The Supreme Court’s latest order resolves Verizon’s refund bid, but it does not, on the reporting provided here, end every carrier challenge arising from the FCC’s location-data enforcement actions. Who benefits: The FCC benefits procedurally because Verizon’s refund path was rejected. AT&T and T-Mobile may still get their own arguments heard through separate challenges, according to Ars Technica. Who's exposed: Verizon is the clearest loser in this order: its $47 million refund bid failed. Carriers that monetized location data remain exposed to litigation risk where their challenges are still pending.