Media Alliance, along with the Benton Institute for Broadband and Society (https://www.benton.org/) were intervenors in the federal court case against the FCC’s latest attempt to establish nation-wide net neutrality for the Internet.  Today we found out that the Sixth Circuit used the recent Supreme Court decision in Loper that weakened the Chevron Doctrine, to overturn net neutrality rules. This is the second time in the last eight years that nation-wide net neutrality rules have been overturned.

Here in the state of California, we are lucky because Senator Scott Weiner introduced and Gov Gavin Newsom signed, California net neutrality laws that were already sustained in federal court in the Mozilla decision. We have net neutrality protections, but because of today’s terrible decision, most of the rest of the country will not.

This matters because an Internet that isn’t neutral allows providers to block, throttle and deprioritize online speech and content based on who pays more and who pays less creating “slow lanes” that can isolate small businesses, creative works or unpopular news and information. The entire value of the Internet to ordinary people is its openness and its ability to facilitate connections that otherwise would never happen. While we feel lucky to live in California, which did the right thing, it is deeply disappointing that the courts failed to protect the open Internet and that Congress has not made network neutrality the law of the land. We call on the rest of the states to follow the lead of California, Oregon, Washington and Vermont and immediately pass state-level net neutrality laws to protect the open Internet.

Tracy Rosenberg, Executive Director, Media Alliance