Columbus, OH – On Wednesday, The Buckeye Institute filed an amicus brief in Federal Communications Commission (FCC) v. AT&T and Verizon Communications v. FCC with the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing that the U.S. Constitution does not allow federal agencies to impose monetary penalties without affording the accused a jury trial.

“From the Founding, the right to trial by jury in civil cases was understood as a structural safeguard against governmental overreach,” said David C. Tryon, director of litigation at The Buckeye Institute. “Our Founding Fathers understood that a jury was not a procedural luxury. It was a constitutional check on government power.”

In its brief, The Buckeye Institute argues that the Communications Act of 1934 violates the Seventh Amendment and Article III of the U.S. Constitution by authorizing the FCC to impose monetary penalties without guaranteeing defendants the right to a jury trial—precisely the consolidation of power in the executive branch the Constitution’s separation-of-powers design was meant to prevent. Furthermore, the practice of jury-less executive adjudication violates the Fifth and Fourteenth amendments’ due process clauses.

The right to a jury trial was no mere afterthought in constitutional deliberations. The Buckeye Institute points out that denying the American colonists the right to jury trials was one of the abuses perpetuated by King George III, impelling the colonies to separate from the Crown, with An Old Whig, an anonymous Pennsylvanian, calling civil proceedings a mode of harassment “more effectual than direct criminal prosecutions.” Thomas Jefferson noted that jury trials “were the only anchor ever yet invented by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution;” John Adams called jury trials the “heart and lungs of liberty;”  and Thomas Paine saw the civil jury as “an extension of a natural right.”

Tryon continued, “While executive branch adjudication may be easier, constitutional rights cannot be suspended for administrative convenience. Unfortunately, the federal government’s administrative agencies have been trading the invaluable birthright of civil jury trials for the thin porridge of expediency.”

# # #