In a showdown with the Donald Trump administration over a far-reaching new net neutrality law signed by Governor Jerry Brown at the end of September, the state of California has blinked first. Late last week, state Attorney General Xavier Becerra struck a deal with the Justice Department to delay enforcing the new rules—designed to prevent internet service providers from favoring internet traffic from some sites over others—until a related lawsuit in Washington, D.C., is decided by a federal appellate court there, according to CNN.
Effective in June, the Republican-controlled Federal Communications Commission ditched the rules, which would prevent such practices as “paid prioritization,” under which ISPs can charge certain content providers a premium fee—which would then be passed on to internet users—while sites that cannot afford to pay, or choose not to, would see access to their content slowed or blocked. The new California law reinstated those rules on a state level, as AVN.com has reported, but faced an immediate lawsuit from the Trump administration, claiming that the FCC ruling renders any state law null and void.
But a separate lawsuit over that issue, brought by Mozilla—makers of the web browser Firefox—is now under way in Washington, D.C. Becerra agreed that the results of that lawsuit will determine whether California can go ahead with its net neutrality law. But until that case is decided, which will likely take more than a year, California will put its new net neutrality law on ice.
Ajit Pai, the Trump-appointed FCC Chair who led the drive to repeal the net neutrality rules that had been in place since 2015, gloated over California’s decision.
“This substantial concession reflects the strength of the case made by the United States earlier this month,” Pai said, as quoted by The Verge. “It also demonstrates, contrary to the claims of the law’s supporters, that there is no urgent problem that these regulations are needed to address.”
Scott Wiener, the San Francisco state senator who authored the Californa bill, said that he supported Becerra’s decision, but expected the D.C. court to rule that states do, in fact, have the right to put their own net neutrality legislation in place—and that the federal lawsuit over the state’s rules would go ahead at that time.
“After the DC Circuit appeal is resolved, the litigation relating to California’s net neutrality law will then move forward,” Wiener said. “I look forward to successful litigation on this issue and to the restoration of strong net neutrality protections in our state.”
Under a 1946 law known as the Hobbs Act, only the federal appeal court in Washington, D.C., may rule on the validity of FCC decisions, meaning that the lawsuit filed by the feds against California would have been decided by that court in any event.
Photo By Cory Doctorow / Wikimedia Commons
