Will the FCC's new net neutrality rules hold up in court?

It's all but guaranteed that the Federal Communications Commission will have to defend new Title II reclassification rules in court. A loss would be devastating for network neutrality and send the FCC back to the drawing board, where it'd likely have to come up with far weaker protections. So what are the FCC's chances?

For the most part, every Internet provider's argument boils down to this: the FCC has called Internet service an information service for a long time now, and changing it to a telecommunications service is wrong. But this issue was actually brought to court already. Back in 2002, when the FCC initially classified Internet service as an information service, the Supreme Court ruled that it’s pretty much at the FCC’s discretion how these definitions are interpreted. "The court will say, whether or not they agree with our reclassification, 'This is not wacky. This is not arbitrary and capricious.' An independent agency has the ability and the legal right to determine what its authority is and determine what the classification of its services are," Gigi Sohn, the FCC's special council, said. "So I feel good about the legal authority that we've chosen."