U.S. Chamber of Commerce Moves to Stop Calif. Net Neutrality Law

LOS ANGELES—In September of 2018, just three months after the Federal Communications Commission abolished its own net neutrality rules, California’s then-Governor Jerry Brown signed the state’s own net neutrality law—a bill considered the nation’s toughest on enforcing open internet standards on telecom companies who do business in the country’s most populous state. The FCC has contended that its rules repealing the 2015 net neutrality regulations also prevented states from imposing their own legal open internet standards. California passed its law anyway. But the state agreed to put the law on hold until a federal court ruled on a lawsuit over the FCC’s net neutrality repeal—a decision which came last October.  Though the Washington D.C. Court of Appeals ruled that the FCC had the right to repeal net neutrality, the judges also made clear that Commission Chair Ajit Pai’s contention that state-level laws were invalid as well would not fly. The decision cleared the way for California to put its 2018 net neutrality legislation onto the books.  But that hasn’t happened yet, and now several powerful opponents are taking steps to prevent the Golden State from ever putting the law into action. The latest such foe, as of last week, is the United States Chamber of Commerce, according to a report by MediaPost.   The Chamber filed a brief as part of a lawsuit brought by the U.S. Department of Justice against California, to stop the net neutrality law.   Net neutrality rules require that internet service providers treat all online data traffic in “neutral” fashion, neither slowing down some traffic, nor giving an online “fast lane” to other content providers. “Because there is no principled way to limit regulation of the Internet to a single state ... California’s new regulatory regime raises more questions than it answers,” the Chamber of Commerce said in the brief, filed in U.S. District Court in Sacramento. The Chamber and the DOJ want federal Judge John A. Mendez—who was appointed in 2008 by President George W. Bush—to slap California with an injunction, barring the state from imposing its own net neutrality rules, despite the D.C. Court’s decision allowing state-level net neutrality. The DOJ lawsuit was filed within an hour of when Brown signed the law in 2018, but was on hold as California waited for the D.C. Court’s ruling in a lawsuit brought by the Mozilla Foundation and several other open internet advocacy groups. Several major broadband industry lobbying groups also joined the DOJ lawsuit. The Chamber of Commerce in its filing last week argued that it would be “profoundly inequitable to force internet providers to come into near-immediate compliance” with net neutrality rules in California. Photo By Lars Nissen / Pixabay