Montana governor signs executive order barring data discrimination, the first such attempt by any state governor to uphold net neutrality since FCC repeal
Harper Neidig / The Hill :
Context & Ripple Effects
With the FCC's repeal of its net neutrality rules leaving no federal backstop against blocking or throttling, Montana's governor used the one lever a state clearly controls — its own purchasing power — signing the first executive order conditioning state internet contracts on neutrality compliance. The move was a template, not an outlier: New York signed a nearly identical order for ISPs with state contracts two days later, and New Jersey followed within weeks.
Montana has since made first-of-their-kind digital-regulation moves a habit, later becoming the first state to close the data broker loophole letting police buy geolocation data without a warrant and the first to pass a statewide TikTok ban. The 2018 order is where that state-as-regulator posture began.
First-order effects
- ISPs selling service to Montana state agencies must now comply with net neutrality principles as a condition of those contracts, effectively re-imposing the repealed federal rules on any provider that wants the state's business.
Second-order effects
- New York and New Jersey copied the procurement approach almost immediately, so national ISPs face a growing patchwork of state-by-state contract terms rather than a single federal rulebook — raising their incentive to push Congress for preemptive federal legislation.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, state procurement power becomes the de facto regulatory regime for broadband conduct whenever federal rules recede — a playbook Montana itself extended from neutrality into privacy and app bans in later years.
The trend: As federal internet regulation retreats, governors are turning state contracting power into the primary enforcement mechanism for net neutrality, privacy, and platform rules.