Appeals court upholds FCC's 2017 repeal of net neutrality, but also rules the FCC can't stop states from setting their own regulations
But the 200-page ruling says the FCC can't stop states from setting their own regulations — A federal appeals court on Tuesday affirmed …
Context & Ripple Effects
This 2019 ruling is the hinge of a decade-long fight over who regulates broadband in the US. The court affirmed the FCC's 2017 deregulation of internet service, but the second holding — that the agency cannot bar states from writing their own rules — proved more consequential than the first.
The state door stayed open: the same circuit later declined to rehear the case in February 2020 despite objections from over a dozen states and tech groups, and in 2022 it upheld California's net neutrality law on precisely the reasoning laid out here. That state-level authority became the battleground when the FCC's later attempts to re-regulate broadband were blocked by another appeals court in 2024 and struck down as beyond its legal authority in early 2025.
First-order effects
- Broadband providers get immediate confirmation that the 2017 deregulated framework stands federally, removing the near-term threat of renewed common-carrier-style obligations at the national level.
- States gain a cleared legal path to regulate broadband within their borders, converting net neutrality from a single Washington fight into fifty separate ones.
Second-order effects
- Providers face a compliance patchwork instead of one rulebook — California's statute, once validated, becomes the template other states copy, multiplying legal and engineering costs for ISPs operating nationwide.
- Advocacy groups and state attorneys general pivot their strategy from petitioning the FCC to litigating and legislating state-by-state, which is exactly the posture seen when the court refused to reconsider the case after requests from over a dozen states and tech groups.
Third-order effects
- The FCC's authority over broadband keeps eroding under this line of cases: courts later blocked its reinstatement attempt, ruled in 2025 that it lacked legal authority to reinstate the rules at all, and in 2026 struck down even its narrower broadband-discrimination rule under Chair Brendan Carr.
- If Congress does not clarify the agency's mandate, US broadband regulation structurally fragments into a state-led regime — uneven consumer protections depending on geography, and ISPs lobbying for federal preemption they spent years winning in court.
The trend: US net neutrality is settling into a state-driven patchwork as courts repeatedly narrow the FCC's statutory power over broadband, leaving congressional action as the only route back to a unified federal framework.