On July 7, John Eggerton reported at Multichannel News that the Petitioners in Mozilla v. FCC have decided against seeking review of the D.C. Circuit's 2019 decision that decision upheld most of the FCC's Restoring Internet Freedom Order (2018). Although the D.C. Circuit upheld the order's reclassification of broadband Internet access services as "information services" under Title I of the Communications Act, it vacated the order's express Preemption Directive regarding state and local laws and regulations that conflict with the FCC's light touch, free market policy regarding interstate information services.
Expect attention to return to pending litigation over state laws and executive orders that seek to impose net neutrality regulation and more at state level. This includes the pending lawsuit over California's 2018 net neutrality law. In a Perspectives from FSF Scholars paper titled "Express and Conflict Preemption of State Net Neutrality Efforts," Prof. Daniel Lyons, a member of the FSF Board of Academic Advisors, helpfully analyzed preemption principles and explained why most or all state net neutrality regulations fail under conflict preemption doctrine. Also, Free State Foundation President Randolph May and I made a principled case for preemption in an article published in the Federalist Society Review titled "John Marshall's Jurisprudence Supports Preemption of California's Net Neutrality Law."
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