In his final months as a FCC Commissioner, Nathan Simington emerged as a dissenting voice in a series of forfeitures handed out to unlicensed radio operators, to ESPN for its apparent misuse of emergency tones, and a September 2024 forfeiture order handed to TV station owner Sinclair Inc. for “KidVid” violations.
The key question for Simington: Do the Supreme Court’s recent decisions in Loper Bright and Jarkesy deliver the message that a federal agency’s financial penalty decision could not be the final one, leaving it to the judicial system to assess? Verizon and AT&T each think so, and took their respective FCC fights all the way to the Supreme Court for their consideration.
Last week, the nation’s highest court agreed to review the Commission’s forfeiture policies.
