The U.S. Ministry of Justice has dropped his Trump-era lawsuit against California enacting its own net neutrality rules.
The news, spotted by Ars Technica, means tthe federal government let the state do what it wants when it comes to net neutrality line with the Biden Athe government’s promise to restore the laws at the federal level. Federal Communications Commission Acting Chairman Jessica Rosenworcel said in a statement that she is “satisfied” with the state of affairs.
The California Internet Consumer Protection and Net Neutrality Act was signed into law on September 30, 2018, in response to the FCC’s move to withdraw net neutrality. Designed to fill the void left by the Ajit Pai-led FCC, the law prevents ISPs from: Blocking and slowing down legal traffic; psupport prioritization of the service; getting paid withero rating of some content in a category, but not all content in that category (looking at you, AT&T); and are not transparent about network management practices, performance and commercial terms.
H.Ours after the law went into effect, the Trump-era DOJ filed suit against California, claiming states have no jurisdiction over the Internet. As result, California agreed not to enforce the law in exchange for the DOJ not going ahead with the lawsuit. Last August, the Trump administration resumed its lawsuit against California, but the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that the FCC could not compel individual states to enforce the repeal of net neutrality – aThough it said the FCC could unfortunately repeal its own net neutrality rules. The court confirmed the claim that broadband is not a telecommunications service, somehow unconvinced by the millions of people working and attending school from home because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Now that the lawsuit has been formally dismissed, California remains able to actually enforce the law it passed more than two years ago.
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But there is one more roadblock: the ISPs. Several major lobby groups representing some of the largest telecom companies in the US: Comcast, Charter, AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, Sprint, Cox, Frontier and CenturyLink – filed one separate lawsuit against the state in October 2018, calling the law an example of “unconstitutional state regulation” and undermining federal law. The lobby groups amended their lawsuit in August last year.
It is unclear what or how much legal precedence this argument still has, as the DOJ has now formally dropped its lawsuit against California. And with Rosenworcel currently at the helm of the FCC, net neutrality may very well be restored. All of this seems to call into question the argument of the broadband lobbyists. However, President Biden would need to appoint a new Democratic commissioner and get that nomination approved by the Senate to break the 2-2 deadlock between Democrats and Republicans in the FCC.