A ruling passed by the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday overturns last year’s FCC vote to restore certain net neutrality rules. The net neutrality rules, which were first put in place in 2015 under former President Obama, were repealed under President-elect Trump in 2017 and then restored in 2024 under President Biden.
The three-judge panel concluded that the Federal Communications Commission lacked the authority to restore certain net neutrality rules using a Supreme Court decision last June that took back power from executive agencies’ ending a 40-year-old precedent of “Chevron deference.”
“Chevron deference” is a “legal doctrine that previously instructed judges to defer to agencies in cases where the law is ambiguous,” The Hill reported, therefore, the “judges are now expected to substitute their own best interpretation of the law instead of deferring to the agencies.”
Judge Richard Allen Griffin, wrote on behalf of himself and Judge John K. Bush, that the internet broadband needs to be considered an “information service,” not a “telecommunications service” as the FCC said in its order last year.
The revoked net neutrality rules would have stopped internet providers from blocking or throttling internet traffic to some websites and speeding up access to others that pay extra fees. FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel is asking Congress to take action in regards to the current ruling.
“Consumers across the country have told us again and again that they want an internet that is fast, open, and fair,” Rosenworcel said. “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.”
Advocates of net neutrality, such as Demand Progress, who led the fight for an open internet, said “the ruling is a blatant giveaway to Big Telecom,” such as AT&T, Comcast and Verizon, who fiercely opposed net neutrality.
“Americans want an open and free internet, while Big Telecom and the Trump administration want to gate off the internet for the highest bidder, and the courts just sided with them,” Joey DeFrancesco, senior campaigner at Demand Progress, said. “This ruling is a blatant giveaway to Big Telecom and an ominous sign that the courts and the Trump administration are gearing up to sign away not just the internet, but also anything else they can to corporate interests.”
The partisan issue will soon be in the hands of Brendan Carr, the incoming FCC Chair who celebrated the ruling and said he will continue to work reverse the Biden Administration’s regulations.
“Today’s decision is a good win for the country,” Carr said. “Over the past four years, the Biden Administration has worked to expand the government’s control over every feature of the Internet ecosystem. You can see it in the Biden Administration’s efforts to pressure social media companies into censoring the free speech rights of everyday Americans. You can see it in the Biden Administration’s demand that the FCC adopt ‘digital equity’ rules for the Internet—sweeping regulations that give the Commission nearly limitless powers over the Internet. And you can see it in the Biden Administration’s decision to impose so-called ‘net neutrality’ rules by applying Title II or utility-style regulations to the Internet. But the work to unwind the Biden Administration’s regulatory overreach will continue. I welcome the chance to advance a policy agenda that will deliver great results for the American people.”
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