As expected, broadband industry lobby groups have sued the Federal Communications Commission in an attempt to nullify net neutrality rules that prohibit blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization.
The industry lost a similar case during the Obama era, but is hoping to win this time because of the Supreme Court’s evolving approach on whether federal agencies can decide “major questions” without explicit instructions from Congress.
"By reclassifying broadband under Title II of the Communications Act of 1934, the Commission asserts the power to set prices, dictate terms and conditions, require or prohibit investment or divestment, and more.
The FCC’s net neutrality order reclassified broadband as telecommunications, which makes Internet service subject to common-carrier regulations under Title II.
Despite the industry’s claim that classification is a major question that can only be decided by Congress, a federal appeals court ruled in previous cases that the FCC has authority to classify broadband as either a telecommunications or information service.
“There’s no ‘unheralded power’ that we’re purporting to discover in the annals of an old, dusty statute—we’ve been classifying communications services one way or the other for decades, and the 1996 [Telecommunications] Act expressly codified our ability to continue that practice.”
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