US Appeals Court Blocks Biden Attempt To Restore Net Neutrality Rules

The Biden Administration’s attempt to reinstate Net Neutrality rules in the United States, looks like it has received a fatal blow.

Reuters reported that a US federal appeals court ruled on Thursday the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) did not have legal authority to reinstate the landmark net neutrality rules.

It should be remembered that Net Neutrality rules had first been adopted in 2015 by the FCC under former Democratic president Barack Obama. However the rules were controversially rolled back in 2017 under the FCC then controlled by Republican Donald Trump.

Net Neutrality

The FCC’s decision in 2017 had been fiercely opposed by the US Senate, as well as by tech firms and small businesses, and many US states at the time (some of whom implemented their own net neutrality rules).

Net neutrality rules required ISPs such as AT&T and Verizon to treat all legal content equally and not reduce speeds of content, but most telecom providers in the US opposed the rules.

However the tide turned after the Democrats finally took majority control of the five-member FCC in early October 2023 for the first time since President Joe Biden took office in January 2021.

That saw democrat FCC commissioners outnumbering republican commissioners, 3 to 2, and in 2023 they voted to restore the rules.

President Biden had signed a July 2021 executive order encouraging the FCC to reinstate net neutrality rules adopted under Democratic President Barack Obama.

US appeals court

Now a three-judge panel of the Cincinnati-based 6th US Circuit Court of Appeals said the FCC lacked authority to reinstate the rules, Reuters reported.

The court cited the Supreme Court’s June decision in a case known as Loper Bright to overturn a 1984 precedent that had given deference to government agencies in interpreting laws they administer, in the latest decision to curb the authority of federal agencies.

“Applying Loper Bright means we can end the FCC’s vacillations,” the court reportedly ruled.

The decision comes ahead of Donald Trump starting his second term in office later this month, and likely spells the end of the Democratic attempt to reinstate the rules.

However Thursday’s ruling does not affect state-level net neutrality laws, that were enacted following Trump’s FCC net neutrality rollback in 2017.