Washington State keeps enforcing net neutrality as it hails FCC court loss

Although the Federal Communications Commission abandoned its regulation of network neutrality, it wouldn't be accurate to say there are no net neutrality laws anywhere in the US. No one enforces net neutrality in Washington, DC, but on the opposite coast, the state of Washington (WA) imposed a net neutrality law in June 2018 that remains in effect today. The WA law prohibits home and mobile Internet providers from blocking or throttling lawful Internet traffic and from charging online services for prioritization. The WA law cleared its biggest hurdle on Oct 1 when a federal appeals court vacated the FCC's decision to preempt all state net neutrality laws. Broadband users in Washington State can file net neutrality complaints against Internet service providers using a general consumer complaint form, a spokesperson for WA AG Bob Ferguson said. 

Four states—CA, OR, WA, and VT—have adopted statutes to regulate broadband providers' network management practices. But CA and VT aren't enforcing their laws for now. Both of those states agreed to suspend enforcement until after all appeals in the FCC case are exhausted. OR's law is still in effect, but it's less strict than WA's. Instead of regulating ISPs directly, OR forbids state agencies from purchasing broadband service from ISPs that violate net neutrality principles. (VT's suspended law is similar.) The governors of several other states issued executive orders that also handle net neutrality by imposing requirements on state agencies instead of directly on ISPs.