Supreme Court Won’t Help Big Telecom Kill NY Law Requiring Affordable Broadband For Poor People

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

During peak COVID in 2021, when everybody was freaking out about how shitty and expensive U.S. broadband was for telecommuting and home education, NY state officials had an idea: what if we pass a law demanding that ISPs try to provide cheap broadband (a piddly 25 Mbps for $15) to low income families.

Some particulars of NY's Affordable Broadband Act: ISPs with less than 20,000 subscribers are exempt. Only Americans on existing low-income programs could qualify. And the price increases had to be capped at two percent per year, though this was to be renegotiated on an ongoing basis. This was a limited form of rate regulation, and not particularly radical.

But NY State's Affordable Broadband Act didn't last long. In 2021 a US District Court judgeblocked the law, claiming that the first Trump administration's 2017 net neutrality repeal banned states from trying to regulate broadband. But courts repeatedly have shot down that claim, stating that the feds can't abdicate their authority over broadband consumer protection and pre-empt state authority.

So in April of 2024, that judge's ruling was reversedby the US Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit. Last week the Supreme Court refused to hear the case, leaving the 2nd Circuit's ruling, and the law, intact. It's not clear when or if New York State will actually start enforcing it.

As Ars Technica notes, this case has particular importance given all the planned looming dismantling of the federal regulatory state during Trump 2.0:

As Trump 2.0 regulators like the FCC and FTC give up on consumer protection, it's going to punt many of these fights to the state level. Given corporations spent so much money gutting Chevron deference in a bid to turn federal regulators into decorative gourds, they're not going to like it much if consumer protection remains healthy and strong on the state level.

The idea of rate regulation" is just about the most terrible phrase imaginable if you're a telecom executive or free market" Libertarian think tanker type. Limiting price gouging in this fashion is repeatedly brought up as a terrifying bogeyman in telecom policy conversations, though it very rarely manifests. NY's effort to help people during COVID was a pretty far outlier in terms of policy proposals.

But Big Telecom is clearly worried that if NY's law is allowed to stand, the years of rate regulation being off the table to address telecom monopolization will come to an end:

"ISPs are worried that their success in blocking federal rules will allow New York and other states to regulate. Telco groups told the Supreme Court that the New York law being upheld while federal rules are struck down "will likely lead to more rate regulation absent the Court's intervention. Other States are likely to copy New York once the Attorney General begins enforcing the ABA [Affordable Broadband Act] and New York consumers can buy broadband at below-market rates."

Telecoms want to have their cake (no federal regulation) and eat it too (no state laws filling the obvious void they created). To be clear, there are several cases currently ongoing where telecoms, freshly emboldened by a corrupt Supreme Court, are arguing that the FCC has no federal authority to do much of anything that helps real people (net neutrality, wireless privacy issues, and low-income affordability programs).

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