FCC attempts to preempt state authority on municipal...

FCC attempts to preempt state authority on municipal broadband would be yet “more overreach of FCC authority,” said NetCompetition.org Chairman Scott Cleland in a blog post Monday (http://bit.ly/1g3oiiu). “The big legal miscalculation here is a heroic FCC legal assumption that this would be another broadband industry versus FCC legal challenge just like the Verizon v. FCC decision, where the Court already has decided the issue of the FCC’s authority largely in the FCC’s favor.” That’s wrong, he said. “This would be less a legal challenge to the FCC’s statutory authority, but more of a Constitutional challenge of the FCC’s perceived supremacy over fundamental state sovereign functions.” Count on more than 20 state attorneys general to challenge the constitutionality of any FCC “frontal assault on their core sovereign state functions of determining economic and fiscal policy,” Cleland said. “The FCC ultimately would lose that case because there is no Chevron deference or [Communications Act] Section 706 authority empowering the FCC with an effective wholesale override of States’ constitutional rights."