F.C.C. Chairman Tom Wheeler. Bloomberg via Getty Images
As if the drama surrounding the debate on net neutrality hasn’t been drawn out long enough, there is an explosion of lawsuits waiting to unfold when the Federal Register publishes the Federal Communication Commission’s net neutrality rules it submitted on April 1. The Federal Register will likely not publish these rules for at least several days. But when it does, there will be an influx of suits from agencies and companies that oppose net neutrality regulation. (Note that any body suing the F.C.C. is legally required to wait until the Federal Register publishes the intended action.)
The debate over how extensively the government should regulate the distribution of internet and broadband speeds has raged for years, but none more intensely than 2014. In January of that year the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled to invalidate the “open internet” measures the F.C.C. had set forth in 2010. Since then, the F.C.C. has acted like a proverbial pendulum, oscillating between loose regulation proposals and strict ones, while being constantly barraged by telecom groups and broadband giants which oppose any sort of regulation. (To get a clear sense of the core debate, see this explanation by Blouin News.)
But now, the F.C.C. has submitted its regulations — ones that are expected to be on the strict side as Chairman Tom Wheeler has publicly stated that the F.C.C. was considering using Title II of the Communications Act of 1934 to classify internet service providers (ISPs) as common carriers and to make broadband a public utility.
Lawsuits have already started piling in, despite the legal green flag not flying yet. TechCrunch notes that lawsuits from both the United States Telecom Association and Alamo Broadband will potentially be dismissed on the grounds that they were filed too early. And conservative advocacy group American Commitment has said it has garnered 540,000 signatures on a petition asking Congress to overturn the F.C.C.’s rulings which it delivered to Congress this week. Trade groups are widely expected to slam the F.C.C. with legal challenges once they are officially allowed to do so. The Wall Street Journal writes that one of the claims telecom groups will make is that the agency doesn’t have the authority to reclassify broadband services as a utility under the same regulation — Title II — that is used to regulate phone network land lines. The F.C.C. is likely readying itself for legal battles on all fronts, which will pan out in the coming weeks.
