The Supreme Court’s decision in FCC v. ATT, Inc. is a major win for federal agency enforcement and a significant development for the telecom industry. In a ruling issued June 4, 2026, the Court held that the Federal Communications Commission’s forfeiture process does not violate the Seventh Amendment, allowing the agency to continue imposing substantial monetary penalties through its existing administrative framework.

The dispute stemmed from FCC enforcement actions seeking roughly $57 million from ATT and $47 million from Verizon over alleged failures to safeguard customer location data.

The U.S. Supreme Court has handed down a consequential separation-of-powers decision, ruling 6-3 that the president may remove FTC commissioners at will. In doing so, the Court allowed President Donald Trump’s firing of Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter to stand and overturned the longstanding 1935 precedent of Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, which had insulated FTC commissioners from removal except for cause.

The dispute, now reflected on Docket Alarm as Donald J. Trump, President of the United States, et al., Petitioners v. Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, marks one of the Court’s most significant recent statements on presidential control over the administrative state.

A June 26, 2026 filing in the Ninth Circuit puts a threshold issue front and center: whether this case should remain in the court of appeals at all. Respondent Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) has filed a motion to dismiss in No. 25-8059, asking the court to terminate the proceeding before the merits are reached.

Although the docket entry provides only the motion’s caption-level detail, the filing itself is notable because motions to dismiss at the appellate level often turn on core gatekeeping doctrines that can decide a case without any substantive ruling on the challenged agency action.

The Supreme Court’s latest action backing President Trump’s firing of an FTC member is likely to reverberate well beyond the Federal Trade Commission. For lawyers tracking the administrative state, the immediate takeaway is not just about one personnel dispute—it is about the Court’s growing willingness to reconsider how much insulation Congress can give independent agencies from presidential control.

That shift matters because many enforcement and rulemaking frameworks rest on the assumption that certain regulators can operate with a measure of independence from the White House.

A new inter partes review filed at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board could be one to watch for companies operating at the intersection of life sciences, nutraceuticals, and consumer health. In IPR2026-00400, the proceeding is captioned Thorne Research, Inc. and was filed on June 22, 2026.

At this early stage, the PTAB docket signals that a patent challenge involving Thorne Research is underway, but practitioners should note that key details—including the specific patent claims at issue, the identity of the petitioner and patent owner as reflected in the styled papers, and the precise invalidity combinations asserted—may develop as the record fills out.

The U.S. Supreme Court has sided with the Trump administration in a closely watched asylum-processing dispute, overturning a lower-court ruling that had blocked the policy as unlawful. The decision gives the federal government wider room to structure how asylum claims are handled at the border and underscores the Court’s continued attention to the scope of executive authority in immigration enforcement.

At a high level, the case centered on whether the administration’s asylum-processing framework was consistent with governing immigration statutes and the procedural limits imposed by federal law.

As the Supreme Court enters the final stretch of its term, the legal industry is closely watching a cluster of pending decisions that could reshape litigation strategy, regulatory compliance, and constitutional doctrine well beyond June. The current legal news cycle is being driven less by a single blockbuster ruling than by the unusually broad practical impact of the Court’s remaining docket.

The cases drawing the most attention reportedly span administrative authority, civil rights, employment-related disputes, and the scope of federal power.

The U.S. Supreme Court handed the Securities and Exchange Commission an important enforcement victory on June 4, upholding the agency’s authority to pursue disgorgement in securities cases. The ruling preserves a remedy the SEC has long relied on to strip alleged wrongdoers of ill-gotten gains, and it arrives at a moment when the Court has often taken a more skeptical view of federal agency power.

For the SEC, disgorgement is not just an add-on remedy.

The Supreme Court in early June handed the Federal Communications Commission an important administrative-law win, rejecting a challenge by ATT and Verizon to the agency’s process for imposing telecom fines. The ruling preserves a key piece of the FCC’s enforcement toolkit and, just as notably, suggests the Court is not prepared to automatically extend its recent hostility toward some forms of agency adjudication into every regulatory setting.

The dispute centered on whether the FCC’s in-house enforcement mechanism for monetary penalties runs afoul of constitutional limits that have drawn increasing scrutiny in recent years.

The U.S. Supreme Court delivered an important enforcement win to the Securities and Exchange Commission by preserving the agency’s ability to seek disgorgement in civil cases, including in the matter involving defendant Sripetch. For securities litigators and regulated businesses, the ruling is a reminder that even as the Court has shown increasing skepticism toward parts of the administrative state, it is not categorically stripping agencies of meaningful remedial tools.

Disgorgement has long been one of the SEC’s most potent remedies.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday delivered a significant administrative-law win to the Federal Communications Commission, ruling 8-1 that the agency may continue using its longstanding internal enforcement process to pursue monetary penalties against regulated companies. The decision rejects a constitutional challenge brought by wireless carriers including Verizon and ATT in a case arising from FCC investigations into whether carriers failed to adequately protect customers’ location information.

At issue was the FCC’s two-step penalty framework.

The Supreme Court on June 4 delivered an important win for the Federal Communications Commission, holding 8-1 that the agency may continue imposing data-privacy fines on telecommunications carriers through its existing enforcement framework. The ruling rejects a constitutional challenge brought by ATT and Verizon and leaves intact a key tool the FCC uses to police carrier handling of customer information.

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion.

The Securities and Exchange Commission announced on May 18, 2026 that it has rescinded Rule 202.5(e), ending the agency’s long-standing practice of requiring settling parties not to publicly deny the SEC’s allegations. The change marks a notable shift in enforcement policy and is likely to alter the leverage, messaging, and negotiation dynamics in SEC resolutions going forward.

For decades, the SEC’s settlement framework allowed defendants to resolve cases without admitting wrongdoing in many instances, but it also prohibited them from later publicly disputing the agency’s allegations.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has temporarily paused a U.S. Court of International Trade ruling that would have halted collection of tariffs imposed under President Trump’s trade program, preserving the status quo while appellate review moves forward. The order keeps the tariffs in place for now in a closely watched dispute over the scope of presidential trade authority and the limits of emergency-based executive action.

The litigation includes challenges brought by states and private importers, including State of Oregon v. Trump, now before the Federal Circuit.

The U.S. Supreme Court appears inclined to further restrict federal agencies’ ability to impose monetary penalties through in-house proceedings, with oral argument suggesting meaningful support for telecom companies challenging the FCC’s fining process. If that instinct becomes doctrine, the decision could reshape not only communications enforcement, but also the broader administrative enforcement toolkit used across the federal government.

The dispute centers on whether the FCC may assess fines administratively against regulated entities such as ATT and Verizon, or whether the Constitution requires those claims to be tried before a jury in federal court.