DOJ to Court: Don't Let California Dictate US Net Neutrality Policy
DOJ urged a federal court to stop California from enforcing its net neutrality law to “avoid ongoing, irreparable harm to the United States and its interests.” DOJ filed an amended complaint and motion (both in Pacer) for preliminary injunction Wednesday…
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in resumed litigation at the U.S. District Court of the Eastern District of California (see 2008030043). The department argued the state law is preempted under the Constitution’s supremacy clause and fails a conflict preemption test. “California has imposed stringent regulation on interstate broadband communications in a way that directly contradicts" the FCC's "validly adopted regulatory scheme" and the Communications Act principle “that the Federal Government -- not individual States -- has exclusive regulatory authority over interstate communications," it said in case 2:18-cv-02660. California is trying to overwrite FCC policy for the nation, the department argued. ISPs “cannot apply two separate and conflicting legal frameworks to Internet communications -- one for California and one for everywhere else. This impossibility means that California’s rules effectively are the only ones that matter.” ISP associations that sued California over the same law filed their own motion and amended complaint (in Pacer) Wednesday. The California law "is preempted under principles of field, express, and conflict preemption," said ACA Connects, CTIA, NCTA and USTelecom, saying their members "would be irreparably harmed if subjected to that unconstitutional law during the pendency of this litigation." A California Justice Department spokesperson said, "We are reviewing the complaint and look forward to defending California’s state net neutrality protections."