A U.S. Court of Appeals has just ruled that it will not reconsider its decision in January to uphold California’s net neutrality law.
A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in January ruled 3-0 that a 2017 decision by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to reverse federal internet protections could not bar state action, rejecting a challenge from telecom and broad industry groups to block California’s net neutrality law, which aims to protect the open internet.The appeals court on Wednesday rejected a petition for a rehearing by the full court. Andrew Jay Schwartzman, a senior counselor at the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society said it was “notable that not a single judge on the nation’s largest court of appeals even asked for a vote on the industry’s rehearing petition.” Telecom groups could now ask the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the case.
Telecom groups could now ask the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the case.
The court in January said since the FCC reclassified internet services in 2017 as more lightly regulated information services, the commission “no longer has the authority to regulate in the same manner that it had when these services were classified as telecommunications services.”A lower court judge refused to block California’s net neutrality law from taking effect after the Justice Department withdrew its separate legal challenge to California’s state law in February 2021.California’s 2018 law barred internet service providers from blocking or throttling traffic, or offering paid fast lanes, but it only took effect last year.
As a reminder, this saga began in 2018, when the FCC, as administered by then-Commissioner Ajit Pai, rescinded rules in 2015 by the Obama administration that had reclassified broadband services from “information” to “telecommunication services.”
Later that year, California passed SB 822, putting net neutrality requirements in place for California consumers, even after the rules had been gutted at the federal level by the FCC.On the federal level, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the Trump administration’s removal of net neutrality requirements in October 2019. Although the Pai FCC’s reclassification was largely upheld by the D.C. circuit court, the victory was tempered by the court’s decision, by a two-to-one margin, to vacate the FCC’s having purported to preempt “any state or local requirements that are inconsistent with [the FCC’s] de-regulatory approach.”
Given the explosion of crimes that have earned special and new designations, it’s good to see our politicians prioritizing the speed they can send their photo-ops.
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