Complete Story
08/22/2016
FCC chairman doubles down on political hubris after court decision
Last year, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), at the urging of the White House, voted along party lines to preempt portions of Tennessee and North Carolina laws designed to delineate the terms and conditions under which municipalities may construct and deploy broadband internet networks in order to offer advanced communications services to the general public.
Notwithstanding clear Supreme Court precedent holding that this type of preemption is unconstitutional, the FCC nonetheless plowed ahead with its efforts to have the federal government dictate to a state how it governs its municipal subdivisions. For this reason, many leading telecom lawyers predicted that the FCC's order was dead on arrival. Seeing the hopelessness of the FCC's case, even the Department of Justice refused to back the agency on appeal — a very rare refrain.
