First-order effects

• The named ISPs — AT&T, Verizon, and their cable peers through four trade groups — are seeking an injunction that would stop California's rules from taking effect, buying time while the broader fight over the FCC repeal plays out in appeals court.
• California becomes the test case for whether states can regulate broadband at all once the FCC has vacated the field, with its attorney general now defending the statute against both industry plaintiffs and, per the related coverage, a federal government that had backed the challenge before withdrawing.

Second-order effects

• Other state legislatures watching the outcome face a fork: a win for the ISPs chills copycat state net neutrality bills, while a loss invites a patchwork of differing state rules that ISPs must comply with network-by-network.
• The same playbook is already being reused on adjacent state mandates — ISP lobby groups later sued New York over its low-income broadband pricing law — signaling that litigation, not lobbying alone, is now the default response to any state-level telecom regulation.

Third-order effects

• If the pattern holds, US open-internet policy settles into a two-track structure: whatever survives at the FCC governs federally, while states like California become de facto regulators whose rules apply to national networks — pushing ISPs toward either nationwide compliance or geographically differentiated practices.
• A decade of carrier-led suits against the FCC, then against states, points to regulation-by-litigation becoming the structural norm for US broadband, where the scope of agency preemption power matters more than any single rule's text.