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from the its-not-over-until-the-fat-lady-sings dept.
From Reuters:
A group of 22 state attorneys general and the District of Columbia late Monday asked a U.S. appeals court to reinstate the Obama administration's 2015 landmark net neutrality rules and reject the Trump administration's efforts to preempt states from imposing their own rules guaranteeing an open internet.
The states, led by New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood, filed a lawsuit in January after the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted in December along party lines to reverse rules that barred internet service providers from blocking or throttling traffic or offering paid fast lanes, also known as paid prioritization.
Several internet companies filed a separate legal challenge on Monday to overturn the FCC ruling, including Mozilla Corp, Vimeo Inc, Etsy Inc, and numerous media and technology advocacy groups.
The FCC handed sweeping new powers to internet providers to recast how Americans use the internet — as long as they disclose any changes. The new rules took effect in early June but major providers have made no changes in internet access.
[...] The U.S. Senate voted in May to keep the Obama-era internet rules, but the measure is unlikely to be approved by the House of Representatives or the White House.
The state attorney generals suing represent states with 165 million people — more than half the United States population — and include California, Illinois, New Jersey, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Virginia.
(Score: 2) by eravnrekaree on Tuesday August 21 2018, @10:32PM (2 children)
Whatever you say about net neutrality, its a matter of intellectual honesty that a court cannot reinstate these rules. The rules were put into place by the office and removed by the same office. The courts do not have executive powers and cannot instate executive orders on its own, which is what they would be doing. If you believe in the seperation of powers under the constitution, you simply cannot be for this move. It makes the unelected courts, which people have no electoral power over , to have far more power than intended by the framers of the constitution.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 21 2018, @10:41PM
The idea of 'net neutrality' was a decent one. But the Obama admin had to turn Title I and II into a pretzel to say they had jurisdiction on this. What is needed is Title III that makes it clear. However, I seriously doubt anyone wants that written down. It is far more easy to point fingers.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 21 2018, @10:42PM
Not true, there are rules about what regulatory changes that these agencies can make. If there weren't, then it would be chaos as every administration would want to change lots of things. They are restricted from making regulatory changes purely for political reasons. If they want to change the net-neutrality regulation, then they have to have a reason for it and because Obama did it doesn't count.
What the lawsuits are about is that the process was highly irregular and the FCC overstepped it's authority to overturn the regulation by doing things like ignoring the bots being used to submit fake anti-neutrality comments, the existence of comments from elected officials that didn't support the change claiming to support it and the fact that the FCC chair has deep ties to firms that would benefit from the change.