T-Mobile Appeals Data Breach Order at D.C. Circuit

T-Mobile challenged the FCC's 3-2 April decision (see 2404290044) fining the carrier for allegedly not safeguarding data on customers' real-time locations. The challenge was made at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Notices of apparent liability were proposed in 2020 against T-Mobile and other carriers under then-Chairman Ajit Pai, a Republican, but the commission’s two current Republicans, Brendan Carr and Nathan Simington, dissented in April. Carr voted for the NAL in 2020, but raised concerns at the time. “The majority held -- for the first time” that customer proprietary network information (CPNI) “encompasses mobile-device location information that is unrelated to voice calls,” T-Mobile said in challenging the order in docket 24-1224. The carrier was fined more than $91 million, plus $12 million for violations by Sprint, which it subsequently acquired (see 2404290044). The order is “unlawful, arbitrary and capricious, an abuse of discretion, and unconstitutional,” T-Mobile told the court. The location information cited “is not CPNI within the meaning of Section 222(h)(1)(A) [of the Telecommunications Act], as the statutory text, context, and Commission precedent make clear,” T-Mobile said: “At a minimum, the Commission failed to provide fair notice of its novel, expansive statutory and regulatory interpretations -- the Order punishes T-Mobile based on legal requirements that the majority adopted for the first time in this proceeding and retroactively applied to T-Mobile’s past conduct.” T-Mobile said it “adopted numerous safeguards to protect the privacy of its customers’ location data, and it acted promptly and decisively to stop rogue actors from misusing location data for unauthorized purposes.” On Monday, Jacob Lewis, FCC associate general counsel, filed to represent the agency in the case. T-Mobile also filed an appeal on behalf of Sprint in docket 24-1224.