On Thursday, a US federal appeals court struck down net neutrality regulations that pitted telecommunications companies and internet service providers against the Federal Communications Commission. The decision comes after the FCC voted last year to reinstate regulations that would require ISPs, including companies such as AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon, to treat internet traffic equally.
Proponents of net neutrality argued that the regulations protect consumers from being charged premium prices for certain types of data, such as streaming video, or from having their speeds throttled when accessing content from companies that compete with their ISPs.
Critics of the regulations argued that they eliminated ISPs’ ability to manage internet traffic and make important business decisions about their data infrastructure without government interference.
The FCC first introduced net neutrality regulations during the administration of Democratic former President Barack Obama. They were scrapped during Republican Donald Trump’s first administration, and then given new life under Democrat Joe Biden’s presidency.
Many industry observers had anticipated that net neutrality would back down after President-elect Trump last November chose Brendan Carr to take over as FCC chairman during Trump’s upcoming second administration.
But the decision by an all-Republican panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit has struck down net neutrality at the federal level, just before Carr takes the helm at the agency.
In response to the decision, outgoing FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said in a statement that American citizens “deserve an internet that is fast, open, and fair.”
“It’s clear that Congress now needs to heed their calls, take responsibility for net neutrality, and incorporate open internet principles into federal law,” Rosenworcel said.
In his own statement, Carr said the internet would not collapse from a lack of net neutrality rules and that the Biden administration’s efforts to impose utility-like regulations on the internet were excessive regulation rather than allowing “the internet in America to thrive.”
In the decision, Judge Richard Alan Griffin called the FCC’s treatment of internet companies inconsistent and described the revived net neutrality rules as part of “the FCC’s harsh regulatory regime.”
The court’s decision cited the U.S. Supreme Court’s Loper Bright decision last June, which overturned a 1984 precedent that gave federal agencies the authority to interpret laws in the areas they oversee.
The decision does not affect state laws on net neutrality in California, Colorado and Washington, The New York Times noted.