Court case

Superior Court Judge Shana Frost Matini ruled that Michael Pack overstepped his authority when he fired the board of an agency that helps dissidents and journalists in repressive countries and sought to replace it with his own slate of directors, including himself.

The US Chamber of Commerce, NCTA – The Internet & Television Association, and others asked the Supreme Court to hear an appeal by Comcast on when courts can force a monopoly to do business with its rivals.

Judge Amy Coney Barrett, President Donald Trump’s pick to succeed the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Supreme Court, could well help shift the Supreme Court’s view of how much deference to give decisions by agencies like the Federal Communications Commission. The doctrine of Chevron deference, established by the Supreme Court in the 1984 case of Chevron U.S.A., Inc. vs. Natural Resources Defense Council, established the legal test for when courts should defer to the expertise of a regulatory agency.

Things got technical at the Supreme Court as the justices heard arguments from Google and Oracle in a blockbuster copyright dispute that has captivated Silicon Valley for a decade. The dispute concerns about 11,500 lines of code that Google used to build its popular Android mobile operating system, which were replicated from the Java application programming interface developed by Sun Microsystems. Oracle, which acquired Sun in 2010, sued Google shortly afterward, arguing that Google’s use of the code violates its ownership rights.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai announced that the items below are tentatively on the agenda for the October Open Commission Meeting scheduled for Tuesday, October 27, 2020:

After Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai announced an Oct 27 vote to reaffirm the 2017 repeal of net neutrality, Joshua Stager, senior counsel at New America’s Open Technology Institute said: “This is an October surprise that nobody wanted except for AT&T and Comcast lobbyists. A federal court ruled that the FCC was 'unhinged from reality' when it repealed net neutrality in 2017, and yesterday's announcement shows that Chairman Pai's perspective remains unhinged.

The Federal Communications Commission announced that it will address 2019’s court remand of key elements of the FCC’s rollback of net neutrality. In particular, the court decision took the agency to task for disregarding its duty to consider how the FCC’s decision threatened public safety, service for low-income households, and broadband infrastructure. Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel said, “This is crazy. The internet should be open and available for all...Now the courts have asked us for a do-over.

I can say for sure that the agenda for the Commission’s October meeting will be filled with treats for consumers and innovators. 

The Supreme Court will review a decades-old legal battle over whether the Federal Communications Commission can make media ownership rules less restrictive. In particular, the court will review a ban that has been in place since 1975, barring cross-ownership of TV stations and newspapers in major American cities (although some exceptions have been made). The ban has gained renewed interest from the FCC in recent years. In October 2017, the FCC voted to remove the ban, along with restrictions on local media advertising.

More than two dozen advocacy groups have filed briefs with a federal court supporting California’s net neutrality law as it faces an attempt to block it by the Department of Justice. The groups filed two separate amicus curiae, or friend of the court briefs, in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of California. The briefs were put together by some of the biggest groups who advocate for net neutrality.