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U.S. Justice Department Sues the State of California

Oct 1, 2018  •  Post A Comment

The United States Department of Justice filed a lawsuit Sunday night against the state of California on the same day that Gov. Jerry Brown signed the country’s strongest net neutrality bill, The Hollywood Reporter’s THR, Esq., reports.

“The complaint filed in the Eastern District of California — the conservative region of the state — alleges that SB-822 is preempted by federal law and therefore violates the Supremacy Clause of the United States Constitution,” THR reports adding: “That the Trump administration is suing is no surprise given that one of the FCC’s first moves under the leadership of Chairman Ajit Pai was to repeal the previous administration’s ‘open Internet’ rules preventing the blocking and throttling of content on the part of Internet service providers.”

THR reports: “In the complaint, Justice Dept. lawyers recount the regulatory history of how the FCC briefly reclassified broadband from an ‘information service’ to a ‘telecommunications service’ subject to regulation under Title II of the Communications Act. When the FCC voted to back off on rules including a ban on paid prioritization via its ‘Restoring Internet Freedom’ order, California lawmakers stepped up to fill the void.”

The report adds: “Now seeking a declaratory judgment that California’s net neutrality statute is invalid as well as an order preliminarily and permanently enjoining enforcement of the law, the complaint discusses how California went beyond prohibitions on blocking, throttling and paid prioritization to also attack a practice known as ‘zero-rating,’ whereby a telecom data provider like AT&T doesn’t count the consumption of its owned content against an individual subscriber’s data plan.”

3 Comments

  1. Fight them California. The politicians always say that states should have more rights to govern themselves, yet this only seems to be the case where it will benefit some big corporation that funnels money back into the politicians pockets. I hope that more states will stand up to federal bullying about net neutrality and let them all know what the citizens of this country really want.

  2. Maybe people, including the Governor of California, should look at what has happened with the overturn of the net neutrality rules. Over $150 million is going to be invested in rural California to deliver broadband, unless the Governor adds his regulations. As we have seen the last two years, removing government regulation encourages businesses to invest in ways that benefit consumers and provide more jobs. https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/news/2018/08/28/verizon-others-win-fcc-auction-bring-broadband-1-7-million-rural-americans/1119091002/

  3. Tim, you don’t know what the “citizens of the country really want”. Neither do I nor anyone else. We may say we do, but we speak only for ourselves. Until an election is held on the issue (whatever the issue), it’s just one person’s opinion. Politicians of both parties, like you, love to say they speak for the majority of the country (on whatever issue they are pontificating upon). But they, and you, don’t. They, and you, speak for themselves and the big money people that pull their strings. One thing I will bet on about “net neutrality”. If you polled 1,000,000 people, over 95% of them would not have any informed opinion on the matter as neither “net neutrality” or the overturn of “net neutrality” has effected them in any way. Those people that have been effected may have very strong opinions on the subject but the rest of us just haven’t been effected. I feel very strongly about the subject both ways.

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