Entire Broadband Industry Sues California To Stop Net Neutrality Law (arstechnica.com)

Four lobby groups representing the broadband industry today sued California to stop the state's new net neutrality law. From a report: 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. Together, these four lobby groups represent all the biggest mobile and home Internet providers in the US and hundreds of smaller ISPs . Comcast, Charter, AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile US, Sprint, Cox, Frontier, and CenturyLink are among the groups' members. "This case presents a classic example of unconstitutional state regulation," the complaint said. The California net neutrality law "was purposefully intended to countermand and undermine federal law by imposing on [broadband] the very same regulations that the Federal Communications Commission expressly repealed in its 2018 Restoring Internet Freedom Order." ISPs say the California law impermissibly regulates interstate commerce. "[I]t is impossible or impracticable for an Internet service provider ("ISP") offering BIAS to distinguish traffic that moves only within California from traffic that crosses state borders," the lobby groups' complaint said.

Comments

Re:let that be a lesson.

[PetiePooo]

California is appropriately trying to force the hand of the US Congress, but their mechanism is misguided and inappropriate.

Agreed. The right way is to make sure people favorable to net neutrality chair the FCC. The way to do that is to vote out those that gut regulatory authority. Lately, those seem to all be Republicans, so get out on November 6th and vote them out of office.

Free market capitalism, it seems, is not the end-all be-all solution, as it leads to market consolidation, governmental authority capture, and abuse of market position. Regulation has its place, and I firmly believe this is one place where it's needed.

Re:ha! that got their attention

[CrimsonAvenger]

I actually hope California holds it grown and wins, then other states will all start their own Net-neutrality laws, each one slightly different. Enough for them to say. You know it would be much easier if we had a single rule to follow across all the state lines. Aka Net-neutrality.

Alas, the Federal Preemption Clause of the Constitution tends toward CA being in the wrong.

That said, arguably the Feds don't actually have a law regulating the industry, so CA doing so in CA is perfectly legal.

Which means, it all depends on who has the best lawyers, and what the various Judges (presumably including Appellate and Supreme Court (eventually)) think of their arguments.

Here is what you should look for.

[AlanObject]

I haven't read the documents yet but from the looks of it the case is pressed purely on legalities of the act they don't like.

What I really would like to see is if the state can force them to explain what is different about their business under the Act versus prior. In other words, once you clear all the "constitutional" arguments what the plaintiffs clearly want is to make more money and they think that the new law will stop them from doing that.

From that you can see where they think that money will come from and how it will get to them. The plaintiffs clearly don't want to talk about this but I would be amazed if the state attorneys don't force them. (Objection! Relevance. Overruled.)

Nope. Nope. Nope.

[Cyberax]

The Federal preemption clause applies only to LAWS and the FCC regulations are not laws. So preemption works only in limited cases like public safety or national security. Both are hard to argue.

Don't believe me? Well, ask the Sixth Circuit: https://www.bna.com/sixth-circ...