Supreme Court Rejects Deference to FCC Orders in Trial Court (1)

The US Supreme Court on Friday ruled 6-3 that the law governing the Federal Communications Commission’s administrative orders doesn’t preclude US district courts from reviewing, or invalidating, the agency’s orders under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act.

The case here arose out of a junk fax dispute where the district court said the 1950 Administrative Orders Review Act,, which says FCC final orders must be reviewed by circuit courts, required class decertification. That measure, also known as the Hobbs Act, is separate from the criminal law statute bearing the same name.

Comparing the civil Hobbs Act to similar laws, Justice Brett Kavanaugh said the law doesn’t expressly preclude judicial review in FCC enforcement proceedings. That means the “default rule” applies: “district courts in enforcement proceedings may conclude that an agency’s interpretation of a statute is incorrect,” he wrote for the majority.

The decision, affirming a 2023 US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruling, comes in the wake of last year’s ruling in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, which gutted longstanding judicial deference to agency interpretations of ambiguous laws.

If Congress wanted to preclude FCC orders from judicial review, “it can easily say so,” the opinion noted, adding that the Hobbs Act’s silence on the matter leaves the Administrative Procedure Act’s standards and “the tradition and precedents " of district courts determining if agency interpretations are correct.

Two chiropractic practices brought a class action against McKesson Corp. in 2013 and alleged the medical supply company sent unsolicited online faxes in violation of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act. While the case was underway, the FCC issued an order in a separate adjudicative proceeding that said the law doesn’t apply to online faxes because the recipients don’t incur printing costs.

The district court then said the order was considered a “final” order and Hobbs Act deference to the FCC’s decision required class decertification. The Ninth Circuit affirmed that decision.

‘Grossly Unfair’

During oral arguments the justices weighed whether deference to final orders arising out of agency adjudications would impede the litigants’ due process rights against whether review at the trial court level undermines the finality of those orders.

“Requiring all those potentially affected parties to somehow predict the future and bring pre-enforcement challenges within 60 days or otherwise lose their right to challenge an agency’s interpretation of a statute down the road in an enforcement proceeding would be highly unusual—and would rightly strike many affected parties as grossly unfair,” Kavanaugh said.

Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Amy Coney Barrett joined the majority.

Justice Elena Kagan, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented, stating the Hobbs Act is clear that litigants who didn’t challenge a rule in the pre-enforcement period can’t contest the agency’s statutory interpretation in district court.

The ruling allows a regulated party to “violate an agency’s rule, wait for the agency to discover the offense and bring an enforcement action, and only then challenge the rule as going beyond statutory authority,” Kagan said.

The chiropractic practices were represented by Gupta Wessler LLP and Anderson and Wanca. McKesson was represented by Morrison & Foerster LLP.

The case is McLaughlin Chiropractic Assoc. Inc. v. McKesson Corp., U.S., No. 23-1226, 6/20/25.