A federal appeals court on Thursday struck down the Federal Communications Commission’s “Safeguarding and Securing the Open Internet Order” — the organization’s most recent attempt to establish what is commonly referred to as “net neutrality.” The order, approved by the FCC in April, was deemed unlawful by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in Cincinnati.
The FCC, according to a unanimous ruling from a three-judge panel, did not have the authority to make rules that would prevent broadband providers like Verizon or Comcast from blocking or slowing internet traffic and creating pay-to-play internet fast lanes that could negatively impact streamers like Netflix and Hulu.
Thursday’s ruling was a significant blow to the internet policy favored by President Joe Biden and his administration, weeks before the president exits the White House.
The FCC’s “Open Internet Order” — spearheaded by chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel, who Biden appointed in 2021 — resurrected Obama-era rules that aimed to regulate broadband providers like water, phones and other utilities. Those Obama-era rules were mostly swept aside when President-elect Donald Trump first took office in 2017.
“We hold that Broadband Internet Service Providers offer only an ‘information service,’” Judge Richard Allen Griffin wrote, “and therefore, the FCC lacks the statutory authority to impose its desired net-neutrality policies through the ‘telecommunications service’ provision of the Communications Act.”
The Communications Act, Judge Griffin continued, does not “permit the FCC to classify mobile broadband — a subset of broadband internet services—as a “commercial mobile service.’”
Rosenworcel, in a statement on Thursday, shared her displeasure with the ruling.
“With this decision, it is clear that Congress now needs to heed their call, take up the charge for net neutrality and put open internet principles in federal law,” Rosenworcel said.
