Chairman Pai Response Regarding Net Neutrality Comment Period

On April 24, 2020, Senators Kamala Harris (D-CA), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), Charles Schumer (D-NY) and Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) wrote to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai about how multiple local governments from California and New York asked for, yet were denied, a further 60-day extension of the comment period over the DC Circuit Court of Appeals remand in the FCC's net neutrality repeal (Mozilla Corp. v. FCC). The senators asked the FCC to reconsider this position and further extend the comment period given the crisis created by the COVID-19 worldwide pandemic.

On May 7, Chairman Pai responded by writing, "As your letter indicates, on April 16, the County of Santa Clara, City of Los Angeles, and other parties asked the Commission for another sixty-day extension of the comment deadline. Longstanding Commission rules, however, provide that parties shall file such extension requests at least seven days before the filing deadline. And in this case, the request was only filed four days ahead of the deadline. Moreover, given that the County of Santa Clara and City of Los Angeles were able to comply with this filing deadline in their first extension request, there is no reason to believe that they were unable to do so with respect to their second extension request. Indeed, as the Bureau noted, it is not plausible that they became aware of any  need to extend the deadline fewer than seven days before the deadline for filing comments. As the County of Santa Clara and City of Los Angeles acknowledged in its first extension request, 'the Commission has a duty to conduct its remand proceedings in an expeditious manner.' Therefore, in light of this and the facts recounted above, I do not intend to disturb the Bureau's decision regarding the second extension request."