Experts say DOJ's suit against California may delay the net neutrality law from taking effect, but isn't likely to stop the state's efforts to protect consumers
Russell Brandom / The Verge : Tweets: @reckless and @eff Tweets: Nilay Patel / @reckless : Today's policy lesson is: the federal government can't stop the states from regulating things the feds gave up the power to regulate http://www.theverge.com/... @eff : “We've been waiting for the FCC and DOJ to act to crush the rebellion on behalf of AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast... The reality is a vast majority of Americans want legally enforceable #netneutrality,” says EFF's @EFFFalcon on the DOJ's lawsuit http://www.theverge.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
After the FCC repealed its net neutrality rules, responses from nine ISPs showed few firm commitments not to block, throttle, or prioritize traffic — the vacuum California's law was written to fill. Within days of the bill's passage, the DOJ sued to quash it, framing the state law as an intrusion on federal jurisdiction.
The suit opened a multi-year legal arc: California struck a deal with the DOJ not to enforce the law while challenges to the FCC repeal were pending, the department renewed its court bid in 2020, and then dropped out in 2021, leaving industry groups to carry the case. As Nilay Patel argued at the time, the federal government cannot easily stop states from regulating what the feds themselves gave up regulating.
First-order effects
- California's net neutrality law faces delay rather than defeat — enforcement is frozen while the underlying challenge to the FCC's repeal works through the courts.
- AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast gain a federal champion: EFF characterized the DOJ's suit as acting on the carriers' behalf against a law a majority of Americans support.
Second-order effects
- Other states weighing their own net neutrality bills get a live test of whether litigation, not legislation, is the binding constraint on state-level internet rules.
- Industry groups inherit the litigation burden when federal enthusiasm fades — the case proceeding without the DOJ keeps legal costs and uncertainty on the carriers' side of the ledger.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, federal deregulation of broadband converts into a patchwork of state consumer-protection laws, with compliance complexity shifting onto national ISPs rather than disappearing.
- The DOJ's eventual exit signals that preemption suits are a delaying tool, not a permanent shield — regulatory authority ceded by the FCC tends to migrate to the states through exactly this kind of test case.
The trend: When federal agencies vacate a regulatory field, states move to fill it and litigation becomes the mechanism that sets the pace of regulation rather than stopping it.