Federal court curbs Biden’s net neutrality rules on his way out the door

An appeals court has struck down the Federal Communications Commission’s latest net neutrality rules, clearing the way for Internet providers to arbitrarily speed up web access for some customers and services.

The ruling is the latest twist in a decades-long battle in Washington over the FCC’s ability to regulate telecommunications companies. It’s also a sign of the diminishing authority of executive agencies to interpret the statutes they impose thanks to a 2024 Supreme Court decision, Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raymond. That case overturned court precedent, known as Chevron deference, which gave agencies latitude to interpret ambiguous laws.

In 2015, the FCC under former President Barack Obama adopted rules that categorized broadband Internet providers as telecommunications services and prohibited them from arbitrarily blocking and limiting Internet users or prioritizing to websites that pay for preferential treatment.

Under Donald Trump’s first administration in 2018, the FCC rolled back net neutrality rules. Then in 2024, under Joe Biden, the FCC voted to restore it.

A coalition of telecommunications industry groups sued to block the rules again, leading to the latest ruling by the US Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals.

The panel of three judges he wrote that for the first 15 years after Congress passed the Telecommunications Act of 1996, the FCC supervised the Internet with a “light touch” and classified Internet service providers as “services d ‘information’, which limit the extent to which the agency could regulate.

That changed in 2015 when the agency interpreted Internet service providers to be telecommunications services, a different category under the 1996 law that allowed for stricter regulations.

In an earlier series of cases challenging net neutrality rules, federal courts upheld the FCC’s decision to classify internet service providers as telecommunications services, citing the Supreme Court case of in 1984 Chevron USA Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. agencies the authority to interpret ambiguities in laws passed by Congress.

But now that the current Supreme Court has overturned Chevron’s so-called deference, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that the FCC does not have the authority to decide how Internet service providers should be classified.

In response to the decision, FCC Chairman Jessica Rosenworcel asked Congress to take action.

“Consumers across the country have told us time and time again that they want fast, open and fair Internet,” he said in a statement. “With this decision, it is clear that Congress must now heed its call, take charge of net neutrality, and put open internet principles into federal law.”