The ruling itself wasn’t so much of a surprise, but when the three-judge panel ruled unanimously that the FCC had acted outside of its jurisdiction in the Comcast net neutrality case, it left the commission on shaky ground as far as its Internet authority.
And the FCC’s top lawyer has admitted as much. Austin Schlick has asserted that the court’s ruling will do little to derail much of the FCC’s national broadband plan, though he cautioned that in other areas, including consumer protection and cybersecurity, its authority is less clear.
Does this mean that we’re headed to a Title II regime where the FCC’s authority would be far clearer? Enterprise Networking Planet takes a look.
After suffering a significant legal defeat in a federal appeals court, the Federal Communications Commission finds itself on uncertain footing as it looks ahead to many aspects of its broadband agenda.
The ruling, handed down Tuesday by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, voided the FCC’s 2008 order declaring that Comcast had violated its Internet policy statement by secretly blocking or slowing traffic from BitTorrent and other peer-to-peer services.
“Policy statements are just that — statements of policy. They are not delegations of regulatory authority,” Judge David Tatel wrote in the court’s unanimous opinion.