Statehouses are the new arena in the battle for net neutrality

A consortium of public interest groups including Free Press report that at least 14 states have signed or introduced orders and bills seeking to enforce network neutrality, while seven states are considering them. Their first tactic has been to block Internet serivce providers wishing to do business with state governments. The governors of New York and Montana signed such executive orders this month blocking any ISPs that don’t meet net neutrality principles from publicly-funded contracts. Legislators in statehouses are drafting similar rules. This requirement will prove to be an enormous deterrent in states like California where ISPs have millions of dollars in state contracts at stake. In smaller states, there’s far less leverage. A second approach is recreating much of the FCC’s net neutrality requirements at the state level.

Ryan Singel, a fellow at the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School, believes that legislation may survive judicial scrutiny, and the political prospects for defending the ruling are dim. “The sheer number of efforts across the states and across party lines goes to show how badly ISPs and FCC Chairman Ajit Pai misplayed their hands by ramming through a total repeal of net neutrality protections without regard to public or expert input,” he wrote. “It’s likely a preview of net neutrality being a prominent issue in the 2018 mid-terms and beyond.”