On June 4, 2026, the U.S. Supreme Court announced its decision in the consolidated cases of Federal Communications Commission (FCC) v. AT&T and Verizon v. FCC (collectively, the “Carrier Cases”). In an 8-1 decision authored by Chief Justice John Roberts, the Court held that the lack of jury involvement in the FCC’s process for issuing nonbinding forfeiture orders does not violate the Seventh Amendment’s right to a jury trial. The Court relied, in part, on the fact that there was an explicit statutory right to a jury before the penalties could ever be enforced against the carriers. Perhaps the most surprising outcome of the Carrier Cases is how, when presented with the Court’s first opportunity to clarify the metes and bounds of its 2024 decision in Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) v. Jarkesy, the Court had little to say. In the broader battle over the administrative state, then, those seeking swift victory on the anti-adjudicative front are encountering more roadblocks than anticipated.

The Carrier Cases decision caps off a year of major developments building on Jarkesy, a ruling that provided regulated parties another avenue by which to challenge administrative adjudications across the federal government. Jarkesy did so thanks to its holding that federal agencies could not impose civil monetary penalties, without a jury, for traditional common law claims without running afoul of the Seventh Amendment. Regulated entities quickly heeded that call, launching a wave of litigation alleging Seventh Amendment violations and Article III violations against agency adjudications throughout the federal government and across a multitude of regulatory programs and substantive areas—even in contexts where no monetary penalties were at stake. However, many courts to date have not applied Jarkesy as a blank check for dismantling agency enforcement schemes. The outcome of the Carrier Cases further suggests a limit, for now, to the promise of Jarkesy for business interests and anti-administrativists alike.

First, a primer on Jarkesy and how we got here. There, the Court answered what it deemed a “straightforward” question—whether the Seventh Amendment entitled a defendant to a jury trial when the SEC sought civil penalties for securities fraud. In answering that question, the Court established a two-prong inquiry now commonly referred to as the Jarkesy test. At step one, the Court examined whether the suit at issue was of a common law nature such that the Seventh Amendment applied. The Court relied on its prior decisions in Granfinanciera, S. A. v. Nordberg and Tull v. United States to analogize the SEC’s antifraud provisions to common-law fraud claims, while also casting the penalties sought as traditionally “legal” remedies (to which the Seventh Amendment historically applied). At step two, the Court asked whether the public rights exception to Article III adjudication applied, and concluded it did not. Some seemingly broad language in the opinion fueled speculation that Jarkesy represented merely an opening salvo in a broader campaign to reign in adjudicatory authority; commentators pointed out the lack of any clear limiting principle on Jarkesy-like Seventh Amendment (and Article III) challenges, and that the “messaging” of the Jarkesy majority suggested “the prognosis for administrative enforcement [was] not good.”

Courts have been applying the Jarkesy test where the public rights exception does not apply, and where suits can be analogized to common law actions with legal remedies. Yet several lower courts have stretched the decision’s rationale to cover ground that the Court itself has, so far, been unwilling to cede. For instance, lower courts have recently entertained Jarkesy challenges to: enjoin consequential damages remedies sought by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in response to unfair labor practices; enjoin civil monetary penalties sought by the Food and Drug Administration targeting adulterated tobacco products; and vacate an adjudication that culminated in a cease-and-desist order by the Federal Trade Commission over a tax company’s deceptive advertising of “free” tax preparation. In some of these rulings, courts have been less than rigorous when it comes to working through the Jarkesy test. To take one example, the court’s decision enjoining the NLRB from seeking consequential damages highlighted above provided threadbare analysis of both the remedy at issue and any purported common-law analogue. Even worse, the court failed to discuss the public rights exception at all. In short: while many courts in many jurisdictions have resisted running with Jarkesy for all it might be worth, others—most notably within the Fifth Circuit and its Texas district courts—have read the decision expansively.

Consider another example of an expansive (and ultimately incorrect) reading: the Carrier Cases themselves. The Fifth Circuit aggressively applied Jarkesy to side with AT&T in invalidating the FCC’s nonbinding forfeiture orders. The panel engaged in a surface-level application of the test, when it applied Jarkesy’s language regarding remedies, common-law analogues, and public rights without accounting for the core facts of Jarkesy that were central to its holding. The Second Circuit, by contrast, rightly rejected that argument when made by Verizon. As the Supreme Court clarified in the Carrier Cases, Jarkesy was only relevant to the extent it reflected an “ultimate determination of the facts giving rise to the obligation to pay” that “rested not with a jury, but with the SEC alone.” Former FCC Chairs and consumer and technology advocacy groups represented by Democracy Forward Foundation raised these points and more in an amicus brief, explaining that in the case of the FCC, the carriers were entitled to a jury trial before they could be made to pay, and noting that the carriers’ unconventional arguments—including complaints of nonmonetary, reputational harm—asked too much of settled Seventh Amendment law and the Jarkesy decision itself. Indeed, even Solicitor General D. John Sauer, a key player in an administration that can hardly be considered a proponent of vigorous enforcement of consumer protection laws, defended the FCC’s ability to issue nonbinding forfeiture orders here.

In other words, both the Supreme Court and the current administration rejected the argument that Jarkesy casts doubt on nonjury adjudications that make initial, nonbinding findings of fact—especially when (as in the Carrier Cases) the adjudication would be subject to de novo review in any subsequent trial where a true obligation to pay would arise. The Court could not have been clearer: where the carriers insisted “this case is SEC v. Jarkesy … all over again[,]” Chief Justice Roberts clarified—in the opinion’s sole paragraph referencing Jarkesy—that Jarkesy “only proves our point.” Even Justice Clarence Thomas, in his solo dissent, did not reach a conclusion based on Jarkesy; instead, Justice Thomas dissented over a concern that the government might have brought an enforcement action in a jurisdiction where circuit precedent precluded, rightly or wrongly, fully de novo review of law and fact. In response, the majority “decline[d] to engage in such speculation, particularly in service of an argument that the carriers themselves did not raise.”

The immediate impact of the Carrier Cases may only be to swiftly dispose of similar challenges against non-self-executing administrative adjudication frameworks. For example, a pending lawsuit challenging an analogous statutory scheme regarding nonbinding assessments by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission will almost certainly be decided in the government’s favor, especially given that the plaintiff hung its hat on the now-reversed Fifth Circuit decision in AT&T. It is telling that the Supreme Court felt compelled to course-correct a lower-court expansion of Jarkesy a mere two years after handing the initial decision down. Given how little the Court seemed to want to expound on Jarkesy’s reach here, opponents of the administrative state, and regulated entities may want to think twice before continuing to treat the decision as a panacea for unwanted enforcement proceedings.

Of course, there is more to come on the full reach of Jarkesy. Earlier this year, the Court granted certiorari in Department of Labor (DOL) v. Sun Valley Orchards, which features a Jarkesy-based challenge to DOL’s in-house adjudication for violations related to the H-2A visa program, which allows employers to hire temporary foreign agricultural workers. In that case, the Third Circuit held that DOL could not adjudicate violations of H-2A regulations regarding employment conditions and wage guarantees in-house, and was instead required to bring those claims in an Article III court. Sun Valley Orchards is notable because it squarely raises a question regarding Jarkesy’s step two: how much is swept out of Article III courts by the public rights exception, and what are its limits? That exception has, by the Supreme Court’s own admission, long been an “area of frequently arcane distinctions and confusing precedents.” Whether the Court took up Sun Valley Orchards to reexamine the public rights exception, or simply to reaffirm immigration as the quintessential public right for which Article III need not be the forum, remains to be seen. One thing is clear: in granting certiorari twice in as many years to police the boundaries of Jarkesy, the Court signals a limit—with perhaps more limits to come.

Gilbert Orbea is a Staff Attorney on the Strategic Initiatives team at Democracy Forward Foundation. Democracy Forward is a national legal organization that, as part of its work, spearheads the Legal Action Warning (LAW) Project, which provides contemporaneous insights into developments in the law.