Top Hill Republicans Urge 6th Circuit to Overturn FCC's Net Neutrality Rules
House Commerce Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington, Senate Commerce Committee ranking member Ted Cruz of Texas and six other top GOP lawmakers urged the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Monday to strike down the FCC’s April net neutrality rules and reclassification of broadband as a Communications Act Title II service (see 2408140043). FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel separately told Rodgers, Cruz and other Republican lawmakers she remains “confident that the Commission’s rules and decisions will withstand judicial review under the [U.S.] Supreme Court’s decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo and other applicable precedent.”
The net neutrality order “is at odds with the plain language of” the 1996 Telecommunications Act in reclassifying broadband as a telecom service rather than an information service, Rodgers, Cruz and other GOP lawmakers said in an amicus brief that former Trump administration Attorney General William Barr of Torridon Law filed in docket 24-7000. The 1996 statute “makes clear that broadband providers offer ‘information services,’ not ‘telecommunications services,’ because those providers offer their customers the capability to generate, store, process, and otherwise use data.” The International Center for Law and Economics, Phoenix Center, Tech Freedom (see 2408140039) and U.S. Chamber of Commerce are among other groups that have filed amicus briefs opposing the FCC.
The “statute’s language defining those terms leaves no room for a contrary interpretation,” the Republicans said. “Even if there were any doubt, references to those terms elsewhere in the statute drive home what the plain language says -- broadband providers offer ‘information services.’” Those terms also “mirror the FCC’s own prior distinction between ‘basic services’ and ‘enhanced services,’” the lawmakers said: “The fundamental difference between these two definitions is that ‘basic’ services did not provide consumers with additional computer processing of their data, while ‘enhanced’ services did.”
Congress “made clear” in the 1996 Telecom Act “its objective was to keep the internet unregulated, allowing it to continue to ‘flourish,[] to the benefit of all Americans,’” the GOP leaders said. “An interpretation of the Act that would subject broadband internet providers to onerous Title II common carrier provisions would completely undermine Congress’s attempt ‘to preserve the vibrant and competitive free market that presently exists for the Internet ... unfettered by Federal or State regulation.’”
FCC staffers “work diligently to ensure that all regulations have a firm grounding in the law” and will stand up to Supreme Court precedents in Loper Bright and other decisions, Rosenworcel said in a letter to Rodgers and House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., released Tuesday. The GOP leaders demanded in July that the FCC adhere strictly to its narrowed leeway of interpreting federal laws following the Supreme Court’s Loper Bright ruling (see 2407180056). The Communications Act “generally assigns the Commission broad statutory authority for ‘the purpose of regulating all interstate and foreign communications by wire or radio and all interstate and foreign transmission of energy by radio,’” Rosenworcel said. She sent similar letters to Cruz, Senate Communications Subcommittee ranking member John Thune of South Dakota and 17 other Senate Republicans.