Blair Levin: Sohn’s FCC odds improve with new Congress, but there’s a catch

The third time might be the charm for [Senior Fellow and Public Advocate at the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society] Gigi Sohn. New Street Research analyst Blair Levin predicted Sohn will once again be approved by the Senate Commerce Committee “relatively quickly.” If Sohn does finally make it to the Federal Communications Commission, Levin said she could help advance action on issues like net neutrality, digital discrimination, and spectrum. However, there’s a catch: namely the fact that controversial FCC orders usually end up in court. For context, the FCC’s decision in late 2017 to repeal its previous net neutrality rules faced a court challenge. That case was ultimately decided by an appeals court in October 2019 and the FCC completed a court-ordered review of the repeal’s impacts a year later.