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A federal appeals court today struck down price caps on intrastate phone calls made by prisoners. Inmates will thus have to continue paying high prices to make phone calls to family members, friends, and lawyers.
The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit sided with prison phone company Global Tel*Link in its lawsuit against the Federal Communications Commission. But that's exactly what the FCC's current leadership wanted. The FCC imposed the prison phone rate caps during the Obama administration, but current FCC Chairman Ajit Pai instructed commission lawyers to drop their court defense of the intrastate caps.
-- submitted from IRC
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Court Wipes Out Inmate Intrastate Calling Price Caps
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Q: Why don't lawyers go to the beach?
A: The cats keep trying to bury them.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Thursday June 15 2017, @03:30AM (1 child)
I don't understand why the logic of just about every other Commerce Clause case in the past 75 years doesn't apply here. Wickard v. Filburn was based on the notion that even stuff you grow on your own land affects the "market" for everything around you. That's generally how Congress gets around "interstate" issues to regulate commerce in a state -- you just argue that the external interstate market is affected. If phone companies charge X instead of Y for intrastate calls, won't that affect how much they tend to charge for interstate calls? I could really only seeing this apply (maybe) to a case where you had separate providers for inter vs intra state, and even then it would likely only be an issue due to an unnecessary monopoly granted to those providers... In a free market, it would all affect interstate commerce.
(To be clear, I'm actually not a fan of the expansionist reading of the Commerce Clause, but I'm not sure I understand why this case should be different.)
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday June 15 2017, @04:02AM
The outcome may have been different had it been appealed to the Supreme Court. But since the new government just gave up on the case, we won't know.
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