Wireless Groups Ask For Separate Brief in Infrastructure Suit

Wireless associations PCIA (infrastructure) and CTIA (carriers) have joined to ask a federal court to let them file a separate brief from the Federal Communications Commission in a fight over tower siting. While the associations are on the same side as the FCC, they say there are enough differences that they want to weigh in separately in a challenge to the FCC's rules by Montgomery County (MD), which was joined by the City of Bellevue (WA). Those include that the FCC did not give the wireless associations all the relief they had sought, and that the government’s interests are not the same as the association's, and their reasoning behind supporting the FCC decision will likely diverge, and the associations may even offer legal theories or opinions adverse to those of the FCC. Then there are the logistical hurdles of coordinating government and private briefs, the former which several levels of review by the FCC and DOJ, they point out. "The FCC has evaluated the record and formed considered policy judgments on the material presented, but it does not deal with local governments in the same way that the Associations’ members do, and so cannot inform this Court authoritatively about the consequences of localities’ policies and interpretive disputes," they said.