Vermont Keeps Net Neutrality Law on Hold Despite Court’s Go-Ahead

Last week, the United States Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., handed individual states what appeared to be a major victory in the battle for net neutrality—the set of regulations that require online service providers to treat all internet traffic equally. As AVN.com reported, the appellate court ruled that the Federal Communications Commission was within its rights to repeal federal net neutrality rules in 2018. But in the same decision, the court rejected the FCC’s contention that the repeal should “preempt” states from creating and enforcing their own net neutrality laws, a step which several states including California, Vermont, Washington and others have already taken.  Scott Wiener, the state senator who wrote California’s net neutrality legislation—which internet rights activists call the strongest in the country—called the court’s ruling on state-level net neutrality “a big win.” But the state of Vermont apparently does not feel that same way. Though Vermont passed its own net neutrality law in May of 2018, and in October of last year Governor Phil Scott, a Republican, vowed to “stand up for” net neutrality rights, as AVN.com reported, the state now says it will keep that 2018 law on ice for the foreseeable future. “While the ruling on preemption gives us some hope, there is still a long way to go in the legal process and therefore there is no immediate impact from the decisions,” said Rebecca Kelley, a spokesperson for Scott, as quoted by the Vermont Digger newspaper.  With several other lawsuits over the net neutrality repeal still winding their way through the court system, Vermont will wait until the whole process plays itself out—a process that could take months or even years to complete. At the same time, some Vermont legislators said that they want to write even more comprehensive net neutrality laws than then the one currently on Vermont’s books—that remains unenforced. “We’re looking to go as far as we could in pushing back on the FCCs ruling and now with this new court ruling we’re going to want to go back and revisit how far we can push back at what the FCC has tried to do at the federal level to make sure consumers are best protected in Vermont,” said Democrat Tim Briglin, chair of Vermont’s House Energy and Technology Committee. Photo By Artaxerxes / Wikimedia Commons