Trump and the future of net neutrality: A lesson in regulatory hubris

[Commentary] In retrospect, the key moment for network neutrality was neither the Federal Communications Commission’s 2015 Title II reclassification order nor President-elect Donald Trump’s 2016 electoral victory. It was outgoing FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler’s decision to reject a legislative compromise that would have insulated net neutrality from review, a display of regulatory hubris that empowered President-elect Trump to undo President Barack Obama’s signature tech policy initiative.

It is unlikely that the Open Internet Order will survive the Trump Administration. Tech policy was not a significant focus of the Trump campaign, but the president-elect’s general antiregulatory bias suggests his administration will not favor the policy. Moreover, Republicans have uniformly criticized net neutrality, which they view as unwarranted and a deterrent to investment in broadband networks. The order itself was passed on a party-line vote against the vociferous dissents of both Republican commissioners, who decried the agency’s regulatory overreach.The more realistic question is whether the doctrine will suffer a fast or slow death.

[Daniel Lyons is an associate professor at Boston College Law School]