FCC will also order states to scrap plans for their own net neutrality laws
Double win for ISPs: No more net neutrality, and state laws will be preempted. — In addition to ditching its own net neutrality rules, the Federal Communications Commission also plans to tell state …
Context & Ripple Effects
This is the second shoe dropping in the FCC's rollback. After ISPs lost their challenge to Title II in court in 2016 (net neutrality and Title II won in court), the agency responded not by defending the rules but by unwinding them — its repeal plan unveiled this week would hand ISPs broad power over which sites and services customers reach.
First-order effects
- ISPs get a two-front win: federal rules disappear and the FCC simultaneously moves to preempt state net neutrality laws, eliminating the patchwork of state-level rules that would otherwise fill the vacuum.
Second-order effects
- States that were drafting their own net neutrality statutes lose their planned lever, pushing the fight into the courts — where the question becomes whether an FCC that has abdicated broadband regulation can still claim exclusive authority over it.
Third-order effects
- That legal question resolves against the FCC: the appeals court later [[a:946387|upholds the 2017 repeal but rules the FCC cannot stop states from setting their own regulations]], leaving broadband governance split between federal deregulation and state re-regulation.
The trend: US broadband policy is oscillating between federal rollback and state-level re-regulation, with courts — not the FCC — deciding where the regulatory floor sits.