Consumers’ Research Asks 5th Circuit Not to Allow Public Interest Groups to Intervene
Consumers’ Research and other parties challenging the legality of the USF contribution factor at the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals urged the court not to allow various public interest groups to intervene. Motions to intervene were filed last month by the Schools, Health & Libraries Broadband Coalition and jointly by the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society, the National Digital Inclusion Alliance and the Center for Media Justice (see 2510300042). The 5th Circuit stayed the case Tuesday because of the federal shutdown (see 2511040071).
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In a brief filed Thursday in case 25-60535, Consumers’ Research said it doesn’t matter that the U.S. Supreme Court gave the public interest groups 10 minutes during oral arguments in the earlier appeal (see 2503260061). “Decisions about oral argument time are not determinations of inadequate representation.”
The public interest groups and the FCC are aligned in their view of the challenge, the brief said. The FCC has always “fully defended the USF program against Petitioners’ attacks, including even after the 2025 change in Administrations, when the Department of Justice’s Acting Solicitor General argued for the legality of this program at the U.S. Supreme Court.”
Consumers’ Research noted that the 5th Circuit denied interventions by the groups in a previous case. “Movants offer no reason to revisit this conclusion,” the brief said. They don’t “identify any concrete way in which Movants’ and the FCC’s interests in defending the USF program might diverge through the course of this litigation.”