Verizon: Free Speech at Heart of Network Neutrality Case

Verizon’s court challenge to the Federal Communications Commission’s network neutrality rules has sparked a battle between two views of the First Amendment.

As part of its lawsuit over the rules, which govern how Internet companies can restrict or block content on their networks, Verizon says that the regulations infringe on its First Amendment rights. “Just as a newspaper is entitled to decide which content to publish and where, broadband providers may feature some content over others,” Verizon and MetroPCS attorneys argued in a joint brief filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. But that assertion was disputed at a Capitol Hill briefing organized by top Democrats on the House Commerce Committee. Calling Verizon’s argument “troubling,” House Commerce ranking member Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Reps. Ed Markey (D-MA), Anna Eshoo (D-CA), Doris Matsui (D-CA), and Mike Doyle (D-PA) organized the meeting to brief staffers on the “startling constitutional arguments being made in the D.C. Circuit and how the role of Congress in enacting communications policy could be radically undermined.”

“This idea that the Internet can be closed, or blocked, or managed by private parties is the exact opposite of America’s foreign policy,” said former Federal Communications Commission Chairman Reed Hundt, pointing to the Obama administration's Internet freedom advocacy. “The Internet is a common medium.” Hundt dismissed Verizon’s view that it is somehow similar to a newspaper. “Verizon is like paper, not a newspaper,” he said.