California AG Files Court Papers Defending Net Neutrality Law

LOS ANGELES—California’s attorney general, Xavier Becerra, took a significant step to defend the state’s net neutrality law from the federal government’s attempts to block it on Thursday. Becerra filed a brief in a Sacramento federal court declaring that the feds have no authority to stop California from putting its own net neutrality rules in place, even though the Federal Communications Commission repealed the nationwide regulations in 2018. Shortly after the FCC repeal went into effect, the California state legislature passed its own law, which was signed by then-Governor Jerry Brown on September 30, 2018.  Net neutrality, at its heart, is the principle that all online data traffic must be treated “neutrally” by internet service providers, who may not block or slow traffic from any source. Net neutrality is especially important for the online porn industry and its consumers, for the simple reason that, without net neutrality protections, ISPs could block or slow data from porn sites, either as a result of bowing to outside pressures, or to increase revenues. Without net neutrality, nothing in theory stops an ISP from blocking all adult sites, then reselling access to them for customers as a package — at a jacked-up price.   Within 24 hours of Brown affixing his signature to the California law, the United States Justice Department sued to stop it. But California later agreed to hold off on implementing the law until a lawsuit against the federal repeal was decided by the federal courts. That happened in October of 2019, when the U.S. Court if Appeals in Washington D.C. upheld the FCC repeal — but also ruled that states were legally permitted to put their own net neutrality laws in place. Despite the court ruling, the Justice Department in August of this year again asked the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California to slap an injunction on the state, keeping the net neutrality law off the books. FCC Chair Ajit Pai has continued to insist that the federal repeal nullifies any state laws, evne though the federal court disagreed with him. On Thursday, Becerra — in his 62-page court brief — said that the government’s “sweeping theory that federal law preempts the entire field of ‘interstate communication,’” preventing states from passing their own laws, was “remarkable on many levels.” Nothing in federal law governing telecommunications supports Pai’s “preemption” theory, Becerra wrote in the brief — adding that the government’s claim that the state law would cause “irreparable harm” was also bogus. “Indeed, net neutrality conduct rules very similar to California’s were in effect nationwide from 2015-2018, and the major broadband providers suffered no discernible harm, let alone significant, irreparable harm,” Becerra wrote. Without net neutrality, however, telecommunications companies “have the incentive and ability to abuse their control of the network to economically benefit themselves and their business partners, and that they have done so in the past,” the attorney general continued. Becerra asked the court to slap down the DoJ’s injunction request in the interest of  protecting “public health, safety, and welfare.” Photo By Gage Skidmore / Wikimedia Commons