Free Press Weighs in on Harms of FCC's Net Neutrality Repeal in Response to Appeals-Court Remand

Free Press condemned the Federal Communications Commission’s abandonment of its authority to safeguard internet users and promote universal access to an open and affordable internet. The filing was in response to an Oct 2019 US Court of Appeals decision to remand for further consideration by the FCC three key issues related to the agency’s 2017 network neutrality repeal, which also rolled back other vital protections under Title II of the Communications Act.

The Free Press filing notes that the court decision found the FCC under Chairman Ajit Pai had “arbitrarily and capriciously failed to address the serious cascading implications of scrapping its Title II classification of broadband internet access service, with the Commission committing ‘straightforward legal error’ by refusing to consider these questions properly in its headlong rush to get rid of strong Net Neutrality rules and the legal framework on which they stood.” “[T]he Commission has only itself to blame for these errors,” Free Press adds, “and the best remedy for the harms they have caused would be a return to its proper authority in Title II.”