Blanca Accuses FCC of Retaliation for Filing SCOTUS Petition

The FCC retaliated against Blanca Telephone two days after the ILEC filed its petition for cert at the Supreme Court to enforce the 10th U.S. Circuit Appeals Court’s May 2021 mandate directing the agency to collect an old USF debt only through “nonpunitive administrative offset” means. So said Blanca in a supplement to that petition dated Jan. 16 and posted Wednesday (docket 22-645).

Blanca filed the supplement to call SCOTUS’ attention to a “significant case matter” that was not available when it filed the Jan. 9 petition, said the supplement. Blanca’s petition argues the 10th Circuit’s mandate explicitly barred the FCC’s USF debt recovery through punitive actions, it said. The commission nevertheless “took punitive action” against Blanca in an Aug. 9 order when it demanded the immediate debt repayment in full and imposed penalties on the company. Blanca appealed the order to the 10th Circuit but was denied “without any substantive discussion,” it said.

On Jan. 11, two days after the petition was filed at SCOTUS, the FCC dismissed Blanca’s spectrum lease application for failure to make payment on a delinquent USF debt, said the supplement. The FCC’s dismissal was punitive and violated the statute of limitations, it said. At all times, Blanca has been “in continuous compliance” with the 10th Circuit’s mandate, it said. “The USF is being made whole, including interest, via the relief the FCC sought,” it said. A footnote in the Jan. 9 petition said Blanca’s USF debt balance has been reduced to about $1.6 million from about $6.9 million January 2018.

Despite Blanca’s spectrum lease application having been on file at the FCC for more than six years, the timing of the commission’s “punitive” order “strongly suggests retaliatory action on the FCC’s part,” said the supplement. “The retaliatory nature of the FCC’s punitive application dismissal order is confirmed with reference to the fact that the USF is being made whole in the exact manner the FCC sought.”

The FCC’s application dismissal order “does not serve any legitimate practical purpose regarding USF debt collection via administrative offset” but serves only “punitive and retaliatory purposes,” said the supplement. The dismissal order “is not, in any manner, predicated upon the substantive merits of the spectrum lease application which had been pending for years before the FCC quickly dismissed it two days after Blanca sought relief in this Court,” it said.

Since the 10th Circuit’s mandate issued in this case, the FCC “has admitted that it misrepresented material information” to the appellate court “for the purpose of avoiding the statute of limitations,” said the supplement. The agency also failed to comply with the “plainly worded” mandate by taking punitive action against Blanca, it said. The FCC’s prior conduct was “far from exemplary,” said Blanca, quoting the 10th Circuit, and “the FCC is now being vindictive and abusive,” it said. The commission declined comment Thursday.