Network neutrality could become the biggest face-off on corporate speech since Citizens United

Do Washington's network neutrality rules run roughshod over the First Amendment?

In a flurry of responses to that charge, defenders of the rules appear eager for the biggest showdown over the meaning of corporate speech since the Citizens United case. If the Citizens United case was about whether corporations could "speak" with money, this latest fight questions whether broadband providers can be said to "speak" with Internet data.

The Federal Communications Commission's rules "deprive broadband providers of their editorial discretion by compelling them to transmit all lawful content, including Nazi hate speech, Islamic State videos, pornography, and political speech with which they disagree," according to a brief -- filed by network engineer Daniel Berninger and Alamo Broadband, a small, Texas-based Internet provider -- which also compares Internet providers to old-school newspapers and TV stations.

But legal scholars who defend the FCC say that is the whole point of net neutrality. Internet providers shouldn't be the ones to distinguish between acceptable and unacceptable content; their role is simply to transfer information without bias, wrote Zephyr Teachout, the New York-based law professor who ran for state governor in 2014. Joining her was Sascha Meinrath, founder of the Washington-based Open Technology Institute.