cross-posted from: https://dubvee.org/post/205595

WASHINGTON, Sept 25 (Reuters) - U.S. Federal Communications Commission chair Jessica Rosenworcel plans to begin an effort to reinstate landmark net neutrality rules rescinded under then-President Donald Trump, sources briefed on the matter said Monday.

The move comes after Democrats took majority control of the five-member FCC on Monday for the first time since President Joe Biden took office in January 2021 when new FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez was sworn in.

The FCC is set to take an initial vote on the net neutrality proposal in October, the sources added.

In July 2021, Biden signed an executive order encouraging the FCC to reinstate net neutrality rules adopted under Democratic then-President Barack Obama in 2015.

The FCC voted in 2017 to reverse the rules that barred internet service providers from blocking or throttling traffic, or offering paid fast lanes, also known as paid prioritization. Days before the 2020 presidential election, the FCC voted to maintain the reversal.

Rosenworcel denounced the repeal in 2017 saying it put the FCC “on the wrong side of history, the wrong side of the law, and the wrong side of the American public.”

She plans a speech to outline her plans on Tuesday, the sources added. A spokesperson for Rosenworcel declined to comment.

In 2022, a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 3-0 that the 2017 decision by the FCC to reverse federal net neutrality protections could not bar state action, rejecting a challenge from telecom and broad industry groups to block California’s net neutrality law. Industry groups abandoned further legal challenges in May 2022.

The appeals court said that since the FCC reclassified internet services in 2017 as more lightly regulated information services, the commission “no longer has the authority to regulate in the same manner that it had when these services were classified as telecommunications services.”

Days after Biden took office, the U.S. Justice Department withdrew its Trump-era legal challenge to California’s state net neutrality law.

  • UrLogicFails@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    That’s a fair point. It really feels like nothing is protected in perpetuity. It seems like everything is only protected for the time being. It honestly makes everything feel a little less stable, and I wish some protections could be codified to make them a little more robust.

    • The Cuuuuube@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      That’s what we get with the Republicans’ hostage taking political strategy. True policy improvemants take around 30 years to enact, oversee, and reap the benefits from. Starting with Reagan, almost nothing ever gets seen through. Every politician is on a two year clock to block or pass enough bills to get funding to do it again. As an organism our country has ADHD

    • MagicShel@programming.dev
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      1 year ago

      Guns. Only guns are protected in perpetuity. I’m by and large a pro gun person, but the reasonable ideas that get attacked because 2A means the right to be a dangerous idiot with a gun is absolutely sacrosanct makes me anti-2A. Don’t take all the guns away, just allow sanity to prevail.

      Of course the last thing I fucking want to see is a constitutional convention that could potentially fix it. That shit show would be utterly unhinged.

      • Beej Jorgensen@lemmy.sdf.org
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        1 year ago

        Not even the Constitution is immune to change or deletion, as you mentioned.

        Democracy is hard. The natural state of government is dictatorship.

    • agent_flounder@lemmy.one
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      1 year ago

      Multiple times since 2016 it has hit home like never before: anything related to freedom and democracy has to be continually fought for. When we stop being vigilant (say from 1974-2015) those that seek money and power above all else chip away at everything until they get it.