New York Supreme Court rules that FCC's net neutrality repeal has no bearing on NY AG's lawsuit against Charter for allegedly deceptive internet speed promises
Jon Brodkin / Ars Technica :
Context & Ripple Effects
New York has been running a sustained campaign of state-level ISP regulation against the grain of federal deregulation. In parallel with this ruling, its low-cost broadband mandate survived a preliminary injunction blocking enforcement, was revived when an appeals court reversed that injunction in 2024, and finally reached the Supreme Court, which let it stand by declining to hear the ISPs' challenge in December 2024.
Today's decision extends that pattern from pricing rules to consumer-fraud enforcement: the court holds that the FCC's net neutrality repeal — which stripped federal conduct rules for broadband — does not preempt the NY AG's suit over Charter's allegedly deceptive speed promises. Charter separately won appellate backing in 2020 to charge Netflix and other streaming services for network interconnection despite merger conditions (that ruling), so the company's litigation record on both fronts is now mixed.
First-order effects
- Charter loses its preemption defense and must fight the AG's speed-promise claims on the merits in New York court, where an adverse outcome carries state consumer-protection penalties.
- The FCC's deregulated posture no longer functions as a shield in New York litigation, narrowing the arguments available to Charter's counsel going forward.
Second-order effects
- Other state attorneys general gain a precedent for pursuing their own deception cases against ISPs without waiting for federal rulemaking, multiplying legal exposure for large cable operators across jurisdictions.
- ISPs facing parallel state suits face pressure to settle or standardize marketing disclosures nationally rather than defend state-by-state, since a patchwork of state judgments raises compliance costs faster than one federal rule would.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds — New York's broadband pricing law surviving to the Supreme Court while its fraud enforcement proceeds — ISP regulation structurally migrates to the states whenever the FCC steps back, leaving national carriers subject to fifty different rulebooks instead of one.
- That fragmentation strengthens the long-running argument inside the industry and among regulators for Congress to resolve broadband authority explicitly, because court-by-court preemption fights like this one become the default mode of policy.
The trend: As federal broadband oversight recedes, state governments — New York foremost — are becoming the primary enforceable constraint on ISP conduct through courts rather than commissions.