More recently, namely this Friday, the US federal appeals court unanimously voted in favor of California’s net neutrality law SB-822, which was immediately reported by the authoritative publication The Verge. And to go into the details, just a year after the Federal Communications Commission repealed the net neutrality rules that had been applied throughout the country until that moment, the said state passed its own set of laws. These rules, in turn, prohibited Internet service providers from blocking, as well as restricting access to certain websites and services.
However, this same California could not begin to apply these laws due to two separate legal problems. The first one came straight from the Department of Justice. The fact is that under former President of the United States of America, Donald Trump, the aforementioned agency sued the state, claiming that its laws were superseded by the Federal Communications Commission’s repeal of the Barack Obama-era open Internet ordinance. A little later, in February 2021, the Ministry of Justice dropped its complaint. Some time later, however, a federal judge ruled in favor of the state in a separate lawsuit involving several telecommunications trade groups.
And yes, last week’s outcome supports that very decision. It is also important to note that, as part of its ruling, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held that the lower court “correctly dismissed” the preliminary injunction against California by the telecommunications industry. It argues that the Federal Communications Commission “no longer has the authority” to regulate Internet services in the way it did when it previously classified them as telecommunications services.
“In this regard, the agency cannot preempt state actions like SB-822 that protect net neutrality,” the court ruled. By the way, the four trade groups behind the original lawsuit, namely the American Cable Association, CTIA, the National Internet Services and Telecommunications Association, and USTelecom, said that they were “disappointed” with this decision and plan to reconsider their options. “Once again, a fragmented approach to this issue is untenable, and Congress should once and for all codify national rules for an open Internet,” the groups said in an interview with CNBC.
