A federal appeals court ruled on Thursday against President Biden’s Federal Communications Commission, overturning the agency’s long-fought and contentious open internet policies. The FCC has tried to revive a broad policy set by President Obama to regard internet access as an important public service, analogous to water or electricity utilities. Advertisement Under the so-called net neutrality laws, internet service providers would have been subject to more oversight. In 2017, during President-elect Donald Trump’s first term, a Republican-led commission revoked the rules. The FCC, which was then controlled by Democrats, agreed early last year to establish a national standard for internet service to prevent the blocking or filtering of information supplied over broadband internet line

However, on Thursday, the 6th United States Circuit Court of Appeals, based in Cincinnati, decided that the five-member commission lacked the jurisdiction to redefine broadband internet as a telecommunications service. The decision ends one of Biden’s biggest technology endeavours.

The regulatory atmosphere has shifted considerably in recent years, and it is expected to change again whenever Trump returns to the White House. Brendan Carr, Trump’s nominee for FCC chairman, penned a chapter about the agency in the conservative policy framework Project 2025. Companies expect Carr’s commission to be more business-friendly. “President Biden’s entire plan rested on the Chicken Little tactic of persuading Americans that the Internet would break in the absence of these so-called ‘net neutrality’ regulations,” Carr wrote in a press release. “The American people have now seen through that ruse.”

The net neutrality debate focused on the extent to which the FCC might regulate broadband internet service providers under the authority granted by Congress in the historic Communications Act of 1934 and the Telecommunications Act of 1996. “We hold that Broadband Internet Service Providers offer only a ‘information service’ … and therefore, the FCC lacks the statutory authority to impose its desired net-neutrality policies through the ‘telecommunications service’ provision of the Communications Act,” the judges wrote on page 26 of their decision.

Consumer organizations, which had been lobbying for net neutrality legislation for more than a decade, expressed disappointment with the decision.

“Today’s decision represents a major setback for consumers, competition, and the Open Internet,” said John Bergmayer, legal director of Public Knowledge, in a statement. “In rejecting the FCC’s authority to classify broadband as a telecommunications service, the court has ignored decades of precedent and fundamentally misunderstood both the technical realities of how broadband works and Congress’ clear intent in the Communications Act.”

Trump speaks during an election night watch party on November 6, 2024. Hollywood Incorporated. How Trump’s FCC chairman pick may make things more difficult for media companies Nov. 21, 2024 For more than 15 years, there has been a seesaw debate for net neutrality. In the early days of broadband adoption, large corporations lined up on opposite sides. Google, Netflix, and other technology businesses have joined consumer organizations in asking for net neutrality legislation to level the playing field with internet service providers including AT&T, Verizon, Comcast Corp., and Charter Communications.

Supporters of net neutrality wanted those providers to be regulated under Title II of the seminal Communications Act, which would have given the FCC more enforcement authority. “Recall that the market’s initial concern over Title II reclassification never had anything to do with net neutrality,” cable analyst Craig Moffett wrote in an investor note. Instead, investors in telecommunications equities were concerned that such reclassification would pave the way for “broadband price regulation,” Moffett wrote. But it did not happen. “That risk is now put to bed,” said Moffett.