Trump admin asks Supreme Court to re-kill already-dead net neutrality rules

Enlarge / Demonstrators rally outside the Federal Communication Commission building in Washington, DC, to protest the end of net neutrality rules on December 14, 2017. (credit: Getty Images | Chip Somodevilla)

The Trump administration has asked the US Supreme Court to vacate the 2016 court ruling that upheld the Obama-era net neutrality rules in a strategy that could help uphold the Federal Communications Commission's recent repeal of those rules.

The rules themselves are no longer on the books, having been repealed by the FCC under Chairman Ajit Pai, Trump's pick to lead the commission. But broadband industry lobby groups appealed to the US Supreme Court in September 2017 anyway, asking the nation's highest court to rule that the Obama-era FCC exceeded its authority when it reclassified Internet providers in order to impose stricter regulations.

Lawyers for the FCC and Department of Justice filed a brief with the Supreme Court Friday, supporting the broadband industry's case. The DOJ and FCC noted that the case "appears to be moot" because of Pai's repeal of the net neutrality rules and that the future of net neutrality will be decided in a new case in which dozens of litigants sued Pai's FCC to reverse the repeal.

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