SoylentNews

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for SoyCow4275:

AT&T loses key ruling in class action over unlimited-data throttling:

AT&T's mandatory-arbitration clause is unenforceable in a class-action case over AT&T's throttling of unlimited data, a panel of US appeals court judges ruled this week.

The nearly five-year-old case has gone through twists and turns, with AT&T's forced-arbitration clause initially being upheld in March 2016. If that decision had stood, the customers would have been forced to have any complaints heard individually in arbitration.

But an April 2017 decision by the California Supreme Court in a different case effectively changed the state's arbitration law, causing a US District Court judge to revive the class action in March 2018.

AT&T appealed that ruling to the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, but a three-judge panel at that court rejected AT&T's appeal in a ruling issued Tuesday. Judges said they must follow the California Supreme Court decision—known as the McGill rule—"which held that an agreement, like AT&T's, that waives public injunctive relief in any forum is contrary to California public policy and unenforceable."

[...] The class-action suit alleged that AT&T "used deceptive and unfair trade practices by marketing its mobile service data plans as 'unlimited' when AT&T allegedly limited those plans in several ways, including 'throttling'—slowing down mobile data speeds after the consumer uses an undisclosed, predetermined amount of mobile data," appeals court judges noted in this week's decision.

AT&T changed its policy in 2015 so that customers are throttled only when the network is congested. Previously, the carrier throttled unlimited data plans after customers used either 3GB or 5GB each month, depending on which plan they had, severely limiting speeds for the rest of the monthly billing period regardless of whether or not the network was congested.

Original Submission