An appeals court has overturned the Federal Communications Commission’s latest net neutrality rules, paving the way for internet providers to arbitrarily throttle web access for certain customers and services.
The ruling is the latest twist in a decade-long battle in Washington over the FCC’s ability to regulate telecoms companies. It is also a sign of executive branch agencies’ waning authority to interpret the statutes they enforce thanks to a 2024 Supreme Court decision, Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo. That case overturned the court’s previous precedent, known as the Chevron deference, that 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 throttling internet users or giving priority to websites that paid for preferential treatment.
Under Donald Trump’s first administration in 2018, the FCC rescinded those net neutrality rules. Then in 2024, under Joe Biden, the FCC voted to restore them.
A coalition of telecom industry groups sued to block the rules again, leading to the latest ruling by the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals.
The three-judge panel wrote that for the first 15 years after Congress passed the Telecommunications Act of 1996 the FCC oversaw the internet with a “light touch” and classified internet service providers as “information services,” which limited the extent to which the agency could regulate them.
That changed in 2015 when the agency interpreted internet service providers to be telecommunication 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 telecommunication services, citing the 1984 Supreme Court case Chevron U.S.A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., which gave executive branch agencies the authority to interpret ambiguities in laws passed by Congress.
But now that the current Supreme Court has overturned the so-called Chevron deference, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the FCC does not have the authority to decide how internet service providers should be classified.
In response to the ruling, FCC chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel called on Congress to take action.
“Consumers across the country have told us again and again that they want an internet that is fast, open, and fair,” she said in a statement. “With this decision, it is clear that Congress now needs to heed their call, take up the charge for net neutrality, and put open internet principles in federal law.”