Court case

Brett M. Kavanaugh has won Senate confirmation to become an associate justice of the Supreme Court and will take his seat on Tuesday, October 9. Although Judge Kavanaugh has discussed his dissent on network neutrality, the Supreme Court's agenda for the coming term now has very few cases dealing with technology, telecommunications or media. Several cases scheduled to come before the Court may produce decisions that affect these sectors though -- especially the regulatory aspects.

When the Trump administration decided to dump net neutrality rules designed to treat all data equally, the states revolted. Thirty legislatures introduced bills to prohibit internet service providers from hindering access to certain sites and charging fees for faster speeds. Four states, including California, passed laws, and six governors issued executive orders declaring they would not do business with internet providers that violated net neutrality.  The Trump administration decided to fight back and challenge California’s law, the broadest in the nation.

Four lobby groups representing the broadband industry sued California to stop the state's new network neutrality law. The lawsuit was filed in US District Court for the Eastern District of California by mobile industry lobby CTIA, cable industry lobby NCTA, telco lobby USTelecom, and the American Cable Association, which represents small and mid-size cable companies.

A number of cities plan to sue the Federal Communications Commission over its decision to preempt local rules on deployment of 5G wireless equipment. Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan and City Attorney Pete Holmes said their city intends to appeal the FCC order in federal court. Seattle will be coordinating with other cities on a lawsuit, they said. The FCC says its order will save carriers $2 billion, less than one percent of the estimated $275 billion it will take to deploy 5G across the country.

CA just passed the toughest state-level network neutrality law in the nation, and within hours, the Department of Justice sued the state to block the law from going into effect. It’s the start of a new chapter in the fight for net neutrality, as the federal government works hand in hand with the telecom industry to stop a wave of state-level net neutrality protections. But legal experts said that the effort to remove states from the consumer protection equation rests on shaky legal ground and may only buy the telecom sector time rather than rolling back the law completely.

After Gov Jerry Brown (D-CA) signed California's net neutrality legislation into law AND the US Justice Department filed a lawsuit against the state of California, a number of policymakers and advocates responded:

Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA): “The enactment of California’s net neutrality law is a huge victory for the free and open internet. California has shown Washington and the rest of the country that the internet warriors fighting to save net neutrality will not be stopped."

I’m pleased the Department of Justice has filed this suit. The Internet is inherently an interstate information service. As such, only the federal government can set policy in this area. And the US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit recently reaffirmed that state regulation of information services is preempted by federal law. Not only is California’s Internet regulation law illegal, it also hurts consumers. The law prohibits many free-data plans, which allow consumers to stream video, music, and the like exempt from any data limits.

The Justice Department responded almost immediately to Gov Jerry Brown (D-CA) signing net neutrality legislation with a lawsuit seeking to overturn the law. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said that the federal government, not the states, should oversee the internet, and California had “enacted an extreme and illegal state law attempting to frustrate federal policy.” In response to the Justice Department suit, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said, “While the Trump Administration continues to ignore the millions of Americans who voiced strong support for net-neutrality rules, Calif

Although the decision remains under seal, a federal judge in California apparently ruled that the government cannot force Facebook to break the encryption on its popular Messenger voice app in a criminal case in which agents wanted to intercept a suspect’s conversations. The decision could be a setback for the Justice Department which sought to compel Facebook to figure out how to give it access to the encrypted communications.

The Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council (MMTC) and the National Association of Black Owned Broadcasters (NABOB) are challenging the Federal Communications Commission's proposed incubator program, petitioning the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to review one element of the program—its comparability standards of ownership rule waivers—which they said was arbitrary and capricious and an abuse of discretion, and thus illegal. MMTC and NABOB support the underlying goal of helping diversify media ownership and the incubator program specifically.