What to expect as oral arguments begin Friday in Mozilla's lawsuit to stop FCC's repeal of net neutrality rules
The FCC will make its case against the rules — Oral arguments will begin tomorrow for one of the most important cases in internet law history.
Context & Ripple Effects
This fight has been running since the 2015 rules themselves: the FCC first defended them before the same D.C. appeals court in December 2015 arguments, then reversed course with its Restoring Internet Freedom order, which entered the Federal Register in February 2018 and formally opened the challenge window (the repeal order's publication). Mozilla sued alongside 22 state attorneys general who filed their own suit weeks earlier, making this a coordinated legal front rather than a lone corporate challenge.
Friday's hearing is the first courtroom test of whether the FCC adequately justified erasing the 2015 framework — and the panel's questions about how the agency defined broadband signal that the reasoning, not just the policy, is on trial.
First-order effects
- The FCC must defend the Restoring Internet Freedom order's legal reasoning before a three-judge D.C. panel, with Mozilla and the state attorneys general pressing challenges to the repeal's justification.
- Broadband providers' regulatory status hangs on the outcome: if the court finds the FCC's reclassification of broadband flawed, the 2015 common-carrier framework could be reinstated.
Second-order effects
- The panel's scrutiny of the FCC's broadband definition and of implications for public safety agencies gives state AGs leverage — a ruling against the FCC strengthens the parallel state-level suits and any state net neutrality laws built on the old federal baseline.
- ISPs face planning uncertainty either way: a remand forces the FCC back into rulemaking, while an upheld repeal shifts enforcement battles to states and Congress.
Third-order effects
- Whichever way the court rules, the cycle — FCC order, Federal Register publication, immediate coalition litigation — is becoming the standard path for access-layer policy, meaning broadband rules will keep flip-flopping with each administration unless Congress legislates.
- A loss for the FCC would narrow how far agencies can reinterpret statutory classifications like 'telecommunications service' without fresh justification, raising the bar for future deregulatory reversals.
The trend: US internet access policy is locked in a litigation-driven pendulum, where each FCC's rewrite of broadband rules is immediately tested in the D.C. Circuit by coalitions of states and consumer-side companies like Mozilla.