US Appeals Court Blocks Biden Administration Effort To Restore Net Neutrality Rules (reuters.com) 114
A U.S. appeals court ruled on Thursday the Federal Communications Commission did not have legal authority to reinstate landmark net neutrality rules. From a report: The decision is a blow to the outgoing Biden administration that had made restoring the open internet rules a priority. President Joe Biden signed a 2021 executive order encouraging the FCC to reinstate the rules.
A three-judge panel of the Cincinnati-based 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the FCC lacked authority to reinstate the rules initially implemented in 2015 by the agency under Democratic former President Barack Obama, but then repealed by the commission in 2017 under Republican former President Donald Trump.
The rules also forbid special arrangements in which ISPs give improved network speeds or access to favored users. The court cited the Supreme Court's June decision in a case known as Loper Bright to overturn a 1984 precedent that had given deference to government agencies in interpreting laws they administer, in the latest decision to curb the authority of federal agencies. "Applying Loper Bright means we can end the FCC's vacillations," the court ruled.
A three-judge panel of the Cincinnati-based 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the FCC lacked authority to reinstate the rules initially implemented in 2015 by the agency under Democratic former President Barack Obama, but then repealed by the commission in 2017 under Republican former President Donald Trump.
The rules also forbid special arrangements in which ISPs give improved network speeds or access to favored users. The court cited the Supreme Court's June decision in a case known as Loper Bright to overturn a 1984 precedent that had given deference to government agencies in interpreting laws they administer, in the latest decision to curb the authority of federal agencies. "Applying Loper Bright means we can end the FCC's vacillations," the court ruled.
Sand in the gears (Score:3, Interesting)
Not every decision can pass through legislative bodies. You have regulatory agencies that operate under broad mandates to create the narrow rules. ...or everything grinds to a halt. However, authoritarians don't like the indirect and inconvenient control this results in. What you'll end up with is a free for all with people guessing what might piss off whoever might be interested and in a position to push back, and acting on those secret rules instead.
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Of course everything can bass thru legislative bodies. Nothing stops the FCC from writing up a suggested draft of internet regulations and year to year amendments to same and passing it over to a friendly congress critter to bring to the floor. The body can then vote to enact it AND importantly red-line or edit things their constituents find controversial.
The idea that we can't have a democratic body at least 'approve' administrative rules is the real authoritarianism! People insisting otherwise are neo-m
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Have you seen our political process? A billion things will stop that.
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Or.. corrupt it worse than the alternative(s) would have presented.
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But the legislature has given this authority. It was not stolen away from the legislature. It is not in violation of the constitution. If regulations go too far, the legislature can revoke this authority in specific cases or revoke it broadly. The system works as designed, except that some loud politicians are so in favor of allowing industry to be lawless that they want to scrap all regulations.
Remember, without rules or guidelines, history has shown that industry will kill people if there is profit in
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The legislative branch was never meant to pass off that much of its authority.
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The constitution does not say it can't.
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Article I Section 1 is pretty clear. "All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives"
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The Legislative branch doesn't even declare war anymore. They willingly (enthusiastically, even) dumped that authority into the Executive branch.
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You've got your head so far up Apartheid Elmo's ass that you're either his vibrator or his own head.
You speak almost perfect Bullshitese, with almost no accent.
Re:Sand in the gears (Score:5, Interesting)
There aren’t any federal laws on the books that use the words “net neutrality” or “greenhouse gasses” or “climate change”. I suspect the federal government is completely handcuffed on stuff like this.
Before the libertarians cheer too much, I doubt that the new fed has any real power over “PFAS in drinking water” or “bat guano in your hamburger” either. Enjoy those special toppings.
Before conservatives cheer that the supreme court is sticking it to Biden and the libs, you should realize that about 99% of Trump’s domestic agenda sits in the regulatory gray-zone which absolutely no longer exists. Every single thing that guy tries to do will get instantly bound up in court and the words “Loper-Bright, your honor” is all it’ll take to stop most of his initiatives.
Re:Sand in the gears (Score:4, Insightful)
As it should be! I'd say I am Trump fan, but that does not mean I want him to be our King!
I want him to take a no-bias and no-bullshit approach to enforcing the laws on the books, and by no bias I mean facial/textual bias, not imaginary as in anything that begins with the word 'systemic'.
If when/he wants to do anything else I expect him to ask or at least arm twist congress into giving him the specific authority.
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Re:Sand in the gears (Score:5, Funny)
As it should be! I'd say I am Trump fan, but that does not mean I want him to be our King!
I want him to take a no-bias and no-bullshit approach to enforcing the laws on the books, and by no bias I mean facial/textual bias, not imaginary as in anything that begins with the word 'systemic'.
If when/he wants to do anything else I expect him to ask or at least arm twist congress into giving him the specific authority.
You're adorable. Would you like a pony with all that? :-)
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But what you want is not what Trump did during his first administration, and appears to not be what he wants to do this time around either. Nothing says bias and bullshit like Trump. Enforcing laws on the books to him means pardoning the Jan 6th rioters), or having the DOJ go after his enemies and threatening to lock them up because of politics - this is political bias of favoring his supporters and disfavoring his opponents, and which also upends the rule of law. If he thinks this is quid pro quo becaus
Re:Sand in the gears (Score:4, Informative)
I doubt that the new fed has any real power over “PFAS in drinking water”
I want him to take a no-bias and no-bullshit approach to enforcing the laws on the books
You skipped the part where there AREN'T any laws on the books that expressly dictate things like how much PFAS is allowed in your drinking water. That's the whole point of the argument.
As it should be!
How long are you willing to drink PFAS water while congress decides if there should be a limit and what that limit should be? Then once we have PFAS-in-water-limit figured out, optimistically sometime next decade, we can start on one of the other 1,000,000,000 bits of minutia that are involved with keeping our corporate overlords from slowly (or quickly) killing us in the name of profit. Sounds efficient. But hey, smaller government.
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That's not the way it works. Regulators will still regulate. The ruling just allows the legislative branch to actually c
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The ruling just allows the legislative branch to actually challenge overreach, rather than the old way of "the President said I could do it, so it's legal"
I assume you meant "judicial branch"? The legislative branch was already free to pass laws narrowing the scope of regulatory authority if they didn't like what an agency was doing.
The change is that, now, the path is much, much easier for corporations: file some insane lawsuit in the 5th circuit, get it appealed to the Supreme Court, and have the reliable 6-3 majority swat down any regulation you don't like. No need to deal with messy processes like "convincing elected representatives" or "making a compe
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The whole reason Chevron was challenged in the first place is because the nuts over at the EPA were trying to claim something like 97% of the land in Iowa was subject to environmental regulation due to some insane interpretation of "U.S. waters"
Chevron was overturned by Loper Bright, which challenged whether the National Marine Fisheries Service had overstepped in regulating... national fisheries.
That aside, I believe the dispute in Iowa was over whether farmers had to assess whether dumping waste in minor tributaries or ponds would lead to that pollution ending up in waterways which are clearly under the authority of the EPA under the Clean Water Act. If I dump waste in a stream that flows into the Mississippi, how is that not a federal concern
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I'm perfectly willing to admit that, being not-a-lawyer, I may be incorrect on this. So feel free to point out where I'm wrong. My understanding, using a completely fictional company called "4M", is previously the process would go like this:
1) EPA tells 4M "We decided that PFAS is bad, quit pumping it into the lakes"
2) 4M says "We don't think PFAS is bad, sue me"
3) EPA obliges them.
4) Judge's ruling states "EPA's experts say PFAS is bad to drink. Since their mandate is to keep bad stuff out of the water. K
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The unwritten assumption is that the laws on the books are good and should therefore be enforced. I submit that many of the laws are outright bad and open to misuse.
Re:Sand in the gears (Score:5, Informative)
This is a misreading of the ruling, you've possibly listened to much to the uninformed Lauren Boebert who embarrassed herself in committee by assuming all regulations were to be overturned.
Congress has given departments the authority to make regulations as long as they stay within their granted charters. Regulatory bodies do not need to check each time for approval from congress because congress has already given approval!
The Loper Bright decision is about judicial review in decision making. It does not repeal anything. It says that the former judicial practice of assuming reasonable rulings in a law's ambiguity be deferred to the regulatory agency. Meaning all those intentionally vague laws need to be firmed up - I think liberals and conservatives both wish that congress stopped being so ambiguous.
Also the Loper Bright decision says that EXISTING rules and case law are to remain in effect! The decision is NOT retroactive!
Also the biggest complaint against Loper Bright ruling is that it gives judges excessive power that used to belong to congress. Thus the judges decide if a regulation stands or not, not congress. Which pleases conservatives mainly because they've stacked the judgeships heavily and plan to do so more. However this will come back and bite them in the ass once the pendulum swings and then you've got more Democratic judges again. The pendulum always swings, and politicians seem to never understand this and are always naive as to assume that their current majorities will hold forever.
Re:Sand in the gears (Score:5, Interesting)
"Also the Loper Bright decision says that EXISTING rules and case law are to remain in effect! The decision is NOT retroactive!"
Sure, but that very decision makes a mockery of precedent, so saying case law remains in effect means nothing. The decision is basically that the courts no longer have respect for either expertise or precedent. That's what the decision is.
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Good.
If they're that insidious that they've attracted enough attention for someone to actively seek out their elimination, it's probably shitty law.
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However this will come back and bite them in the ass once the pendulum swings and then you've got more Democratic judges again. The pendulum always swings, and politicians seem to never understand this and are always naive as to assume that their current majorities will hold forever.
Does it, though? Because it seems to me that the two parties have very clearly demonstrated that one of them will pass any law, rule, or regulation that benefits them independent of its legality, ignore any law, rule, or regulation that doesn't benefit them, and blithely ignore judicial decisions against them and continue to engage in their illegal (as decided by the courts) activities (regardless of who has the majority), while the other will continue to play by the rules, seek compromise, and generally ge
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Well here's an example of the compromise seeking party doing one bad thing once so really they're no better than the party that's doing bad shit all the time. Now I've declared they're completely equivalent, that justifies voting for the one that does bad shit all the time. Even though they are equivalent.
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"The Loper-Bright decision was *very* clearly worded."
LOL. This decision is now "law" despite not being found in the constitution nor "passed through" the legislative branch. The irony.
Law now is dictated more by what Leonard Leo says that any agency, legislator or judge. Laws are dependent on which oligarch is paying.
"I suspect the federal government is completely handcuffed on stuff like this."
Or not handcuffed in the slightest, depending on what they want to do. You can sue, but federal judges don't
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Before conservatives cheer that the supreme court is sticking it to Biden and the libs, you should realize that about 99% of Trump's domestic agenda sits in the regulatory gray-zone which absolutely no longer exists. Every single thing that guy tries to do will get instantly bound up in court and the words Loper-Bright, your honor is all it'll take to stop most of his initiatives.
The supreme court, a bunch of corrupt, unelected bureaucrats, would like a word with you. Just wait until they somehow find precedent to make Trump's regulation permanent.
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> the idea of a “regulation” is now largely obsolete the US. There are laws required to be followed
You believe that there aren't regulations drafted by executive departments and adjudicated by administrative law judges (which are a thing that wouldn't exist if your claim were true)?
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Not every decision can pass through legislative bodies.
You've done nothing to demonstrate that this is true. Congress already passes thousand page bloated messes that no one has actually read so I don't see your assertion as being true. If an agency wants to crap out a thousand page policy bill for Congress to bicker over before passing or rejecting it, I have no objection to that, but it is the responsibility of our elected representatives (and not an unelected bureaucracy) to do that and they cannot abdicate that responsibility as much as they might want to.
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Actually the supreme court just decided that de facto every decision must pass through legislative bodies. [scotusblog.com]
Which is gonna suck.
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Oh good, congress debating the finer points of packet latency to the "series of tubes" guy.
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>"Actually the supreme court just decided that de facto every decision must pass through legislative bodies. [scotusblog.com]"
Not really. It decided that these unelected commission bodies and agencies can't veer too far outside their clear mandates given to them by Congress. If Congress wants them to have more/different/changed abilities, they just have to define and approve those by updating the mandates/legislation.
This is clearly better than creating semi-autonomous beasts that then just do whatever
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.. the thing that is weird about that is.. .. Congress /always/ had the power to change the laws, and the scope, responsibility and composition of the regulatory bodies.. and thus to direct the regulations.
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Having the legislature (who don't know much about.. much of anything) be required to make all the rules is also not good. You often need actual experts to do that, and you better pray those experts aren't just lobbyists.
As with many things going for some ideal at either end of the spectrum is likely to result in lots of suckage.
Not that the legislature is particularly accountable in the first place, mind you, especially with gerrymandering giving you control over everything with as low as 30% of the vote (y
Gerrymandering (Score:2)
30% with "perfect" gerrymandering gets you 100% control of everything)
I think this misses how partisan congress and legislatures actually make decisions and how they are elected. You don't require even that many votes to have effective control. We elect members from districts. So each member got the most votes in their district. In most cases, a sizable minority didn't vote for them. So the total votes for ALL the members is slightly over 50%. But they then choose which party they will support. The majority party may or may not have received a even majority of that 50% of the
Worse than that. (Score:2)
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Having the legislature (who don't know much about.. much of anything) be required to make all the rules is also not good. You often need actual experts to do that
You need experts to assign frequency spectrums and set interference standards, those are technical matters. Net neutrality is a matter of social policy trying to masquerade as a technical issue, and even if the FCC has actual social policy experts, whatever those would look like, it would be safe to say that is not part of their area of expertise and thus not part of their mandate. It is hard to argue things which don't require experts but are clearly political matters should not be left to politicians.
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I am highly unconvinced that homo sapiens is capable of producing experts
Re:Not just authoritarians! (Score:5, Insightful)
Having unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats essentially make up new rules is a recipe for corruption.
You don't say... https://www.supremecourt.gov/ [supremecourt.gov]
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Yeah man, they were pretty wild coming up with whole abortion schedules out of the 14th amendment back when everyone was afraid of overpopulation and immigrant babies.
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Except that legislation does grant authority to define the specifics. Democratically, and according to the constitution. Republicans pass these lawa and approve of them. EXCEPT with Democrat administrations enact regulations, then suddenly they're opposed. It's just standard politics: it's good when we do it but bad when you do it.
In a country this big, you CANNOT have a system where the legislature must create every single minutiae of regulation.
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Which is why we have fifty separate administrative districts, and may we should start acting like it more.
States should have more power, the federal government should be given less, an we should have more social and legal diversity among the states / regions than we do. Let their be a market place of ideas, and let people vote both in the ballot box and with their feet!
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Which is why we have fifty separate administrative districts, and may we should start acting like it more.
States should have more power, the federal government should be given less, an we should have more social and legal diversity among the states / regions than we do. Let their be a market place of ideas, and let people vote both in the ballot box and with their feet!
We tried that the first time [wikipedia.org] and it didn't go so well... Those who don't listen to history and all that...
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To be accurate- the only people it didn't go well for were the wealthy elites. The lower classes benefited from the protectionist trade policies of the independent states, as well as the confusion over credit and debt repayment, and the fact that every town could issue it's own currency.
All of these loopholes, so useful to the lower classes in "voting with their feet" were eliminated. It was all about centralization of tyranny.
Re:Not just authoritarians! (Score:4, Interesting)
Math shows this doesn't work. As in, pure math, beyond even the "special case" of physics, which allows for some flexibility, whereas pure math not even as much.
The keywords are tragedy of the commons [wikipedia.org] and of the anticommons [wikipedia.org], game theory [wikipedia.org], Pareto efficiency [wikipedia.org] and Nash equilibrium [wikipedia.org].
No amount of ideological belief-based hand-waving can overcome the iron grip of those. It's either work with and through them all, or not work. Or rather, pretending they don't apply will result in them applying regardless, and whatever that is to become quite manifest -- irrespective of those warm and fuzzy beliefs.
Incidentally, that's also why Marxism doesn't work. They commit the same error of ignoring math, except they do so in the opposite direction.
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Incidentally, that's also why Marxism doesn't work.
It's always struck me that unregulated capitalism and communism fail for the same reason: people will be shitty. And the proposed solution to both is the same: you just need to do it harder.
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Yep. Even self-proclaimed pro-Capitalism free-market absolutists aren't, because deep down they realize pure unbridled Capitalism doesn't work and it's a very shitty thing to live under.
For example, take the most radical of ancaps, those Libertarians of the Rothbardian persuasion. Even they require regulation of Capitalism in the form of not allowing the free trade of laws so the biggest bidder can forcefully obtain exclusive monopolistic control of an entire market, not allowing the free trade of conquerin
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The legislature should be the source of new law.
None this matters when our legislatures and our courts are corrupted by undue influences. Welcome to classism and economic slavery remember, the rich and the powerful control 'our' governments now, welcome to corporatocracy. It's too late now, the decline is upon us.
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The legislature should be the source of new law.
The legislature is an expert in nothing but law and therefore would be a fucking horrendous source of laws governing regulation. They barely understand basic economics let alone the kind of topics the FCC, FAA, FDA, etc are tasked with regulating. There's a reason to defer to experts, and there's a good reasons to leave experts be unelected bureaucrats and not judge them by a popularity contest.
Re:Sand in the gears (Score:5, Insightful)
We've seen the deregulated world before. Rivers that catch on fire from pollution, etc. Water that kills.
That world was much worse than today's world.
Regulation is always bad for someone. The question is /always/ does it create more good, i.e. driving the flywheel faster for everyone or not?
Too much regulation is a damper. Too little is a danger.
The biggest issue isn't the amount of regulation, or who does it-- it is that it takes too long to get anything done. /anything/ done is ludicrous).
What we need is more efficient regulation (and I'd throw the courts in there too-- taking years to get
That can come in the form of 'less' regulation, but it could also come in the form of limits to the amounts of delay that can happen because of regulations.
Re:Sand in the gears (Score:5, Informative)
Union Carbide agrees with you. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Its cute and kinda scary you think the people have any power right now
Well... (very) rich people ...
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The legislatures who granted regulatory authority also have the ability to take it away. The legislature CAN say "you went to far." Except that the legislature these days is more about grandstanding than in getting stuff done...
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Regulation is the sand in the gears of industry
Maybe if "industry" didn't have a mile long list of sociopathic behavior we wouldn't have to put some of that sand (that they polluted) in their gears.
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The US President is not directly accountable to the citizenry. People seem to have seen no grave danger in that arrangement for nearly 250 years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Is the FCC pointless now? (Score:3)
Re:Is the FCC pointless now? (Score:5, Insightful)
If the FCC lacks authority to reinstate rules, logic dictates that the FCC also lacks authority to instate and enforce rules.
Yes. That was the point of the Loper ruling. Give the US to corporations to be bumfucked at will. Now implementation of any rule can be dragged by 10-15 years _easily_ by filing lawsuits and then stretching the time as much as possible.
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Re:Is the FCC pointless now? (Score:5, Informative)
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>"The "as written" has always meant that the agencies can interpret the instructions within the scope of their authority. Now they can't, unless the instructions are explicit."
That isn't correct. They can't unless the *scope* of the mandate is more explicit and covers what they are trying to do. There is a big difference. The issue is that the agencies have been going way outside the scope because that scope hasn't been updated in eons and things change.
If Congress grants the FCC the scope to regulate
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That isn't correct. They can't unless the *scope* of the mandate is more explicit and covers what they are trying to do.
Nope. You don't understand the ruling. It has always been OK to challenge the _scope_ of the agency. Now you can challenge the _findings_. So it's now OK to say that "nah, we think that FCC's findings are incorrect", and challenge _them_ in court. Then do the appeals. You can easily stretch it to 10 years using this strategy.
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Are you a lawyer? Cuz markdavis appears to be correct.
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Loper Bright (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact they had to rely on Loper Bright - basically a precedent that says that courts can rule from the gut, they don't have to actually listen to the experts who were approved by Congress to look into these issues - says this is basically a political decision not a legal one.
We're in for a rough few decades until SCOTUS can be reformed.
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>"they don't have to actually listen to the experts who were approved by Congress to look into these issues"
That isn't my understanding of what the court did. They essentially said the regulations have to fit within the scope of the agency's mandate. Has nothing to do with courts replacing so-called "experts." Congress can just authorize the FCC to have the power to regulate the speed and prioritization of ISP internet connections (which is expanding/defining the new scope). Then the "experts" at the
I'm not sure we can (Score:2)
Politicians, specifically the ones on the right wing, are picking their voters instead of the other way around. Stalin was wrong. It's not about who counts the votes it's about who decides where working voting machines get sent to.
I think the Democrats thought that they were safe because everyone w
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Meanwhile Republicans did quite well by voting early!
https://apnews.com/article/ear... [apnews.com]
Multiple Trumpian influencers were begging Republican voters to vote early and to expect long lines and disruptions at the polls. Not that any of this is related to Loper Bright. Instead of engaging with the subject at hand, all you want to do is gripe that your political faction hasn't figured out how to seize control of the Supreme Court.
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Never happen because the terminally-online left would rather spend their time shitting on Democrats than actual change
Legislating from the bench (Score:1)
What we now have is courts making laws. Wasn't this supposed to be a bad thing at one point in time?
Where's the doom and gloom? (Score:1)
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I'm sad that you're both right and will never get any attention from the yahoos infesting Slashdot these days.
Net Neutrality as sold by the FCC was always a scam anyway. It never actually took effect and none of the things it attempted to regulate were even happening nor have happened since. It was a huge waste of bureaucracy and resources.
Meanwhile, the actual platforms that needed to have neutrality baked into, Social media, was spared from the whole ordeal as only carriers were being targetted. Sectio
More correctly stated ... (Score:2)
"Applying Loper Bright means we can end the FCC's vacillations," the court ruled.
The court should have stated, "Applying Loper Bright means we can end the FCC's vacillations with vaccillations from courts instead." It is insulting for courts to assume that they should enjoy a presumption of political neutrality when it is obvious that they do not.
Not 3 judges (Score:2)
The best judges that money can buy.
Re:It's the right move (Score:5, Interesting)
Congress should make the rules, not the president. I think that's how it's supposed to work
The Congress created the FCC with the express purpose of creating communications law. What part of that don't you understand?
Would you rather have subject matter experts at the FCC making communications regulations, or idiots in Congress like Boebert and MTG making them?
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Congress created the FCC to regulate radio and things that existed in 1934 and probably gave it some additional directly legislated authorities along the way.
I don't see why any of us should be happy or okay with it just deciding on its own that it can regulate activities that dont include some kind of radiated emissions. If congress wants the FCC to have the authority to regulated how routing and switching are done on closed, privately owned networks, than it can pass some specific legislation giving the
Re:It's the right move (Score:5, Informative)
The FCC didn't stop being overseen by Congress in 1934, and Congressional committees overseeing Congress continue to operate and Congress continues to approve whoever runs it. If Congress wants to restrict the FCC or change its mandate or believes its exceeding its mandate, they have opportunities at the micro- and macro- level to do so.
Regardless, your argument only makes sense if you're proposing new legislation should be passed, with the FCC reformed or abolished, not to justify the courts deciding they know better than both Congress and the FCC about what the FCC should do. This is a powergrab from Congress by the courts.
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if you want to look at it that way the the 1934 act should be struck as unconstitutional and the entire FCC should be abolished by the court.
Congress does not have constitutional authority to create additional legislative bodies. If that is what the FCC directors are, than it is illegal.
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The power to regulate commerce is explicitly mentioned as one of the powers of government in the constitution. All I'm aware of saying that Congress can't do what has been done for the last nearly 200 years, having been previously upheld by prior Supreme Courts, is a dubious recent Supreme Court ruling... where the Supreme Court is a unelected bunch of explicitly unaccountable for life folks. This was, in my opinion, one of many recent dubious rulings, like "gratuities to government officials aren't bribes
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What part of the constitution stops congress from delegating? As long as what they're delegating falls under the purview of the federal government they should be fine as there's nothing that I know of that forbids it. Congress still has ultimate say in regards to anything the bureaucracy does after all so they havent forfeited their responsibilities, they've just turned them over to experts they can override at any time because what the fuck does a congress person know about a lot of the stuff our governmen
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Because the "additional directly legislated authority" includes wired communications as well. And the Supreme Court has upheld this. In 1965 for example, Supreme Court held that FCC had jursidiction over cable television (ie, not radio or wireless).
The recent Loper Bright ruling did not overturn existing case law or rulings regarding regulations, it did not retractively remove past Supreme Court decisions in this matter. Thus FCC _still_ has regulatory authority over cable television no matter what Boeber
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Congress created the FCC to regulate radio and things that existed in 1934...
If congress thought the FCC's mandate wasn't relevant or that they were doing something congress disagrees with they could pass a law overruling them or stripping them of their power. They didn't. That means they implicitly consent to the FCC regulating things that exist in 2025.
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"If congress wants the FCC to have the authority to regulated how routing and switching are done..."
But net neutrality isn't about how routing and switching are done, it's about packets being routed and switched without prejudice.
If only congress would pass a law regulating bad faith arguments.
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If only congress would pass a law regulating bad faith arguments.
And put themselves out of business?
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"The Congress created the FCC with the express purpose of creating communications law. What part of that don't you understand?"
No. The FCC was created to enforce communications law, not create it. As for experts, this topic doesn't require experts to understand the underlying issues.
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What are the underlying issues?
How do you feel about California's net neutrality law? Or are we not cheering for "states rights" on this one?
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The topic of the law or enforcement of it, or understanding companies' behaviors doesn't require experts?
That is a courageously naive outlook.
So, who are we electing in congress or appointing in courts that understand this stuff enough to do /anything/ proper w.r.t. modern communications?
So every time anyone does anything (Score:2)
This way the Republicans in Congress can stonewall anything they don't like.
I'm not convinced everyone doing these "Congress should do it!" posts understands that. A lot of times it's just something they picked up from Rush Limbaugh or whatever replaced him on AM Radio when he died. But that's the gist of why you see all these posts.
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Still 1000x better than the left which has some unaccountable bureaucrat enact policy, the public would never vote for, force it on everyone for a generation while you hide behind some justice robes and then act like conservatives are the radicals for daring to suggest we could you know go back...
Fortunately we finally took back the court and can now stop your kind from stealing our country from us.
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Congress cannot delegate its authority to create laws.
Re:It's the right move (Score:5, Informative)
Your title is wrong because you apparently didn't think through the implications before writing it.
Congress was just overruled by the courts. An agency created by Congress, whose directors are appointed with the approval of congress, which is overseen by Congress, was just told it couldn't do something because it hurt the judge's fee-fees.
That's what Loper Bright is. It allows courts to decide they, not Congress, have power over the Executive - not simply when constitutional questions arise, but on basic day-to-day operations. It's a power grab from the elected part of our government by the unelected, unaccountable, part. Literally nothing Congress does matters any more. There are no laws it can pass in any meaningful way that it can rely upon impacting anything, because the courts no longer need to come up with a constitutional question to invalidate the will of congress.
Loper Bright is insane, and another reason why SCOTUS needs to be reformed.
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Congress was just overruled by the courts. An agency created by Congress, whose directors are appointed with the approval of congress, which is overseen by Congress, was just told it couldn't do something because it hurt the judge's fee-fees.
It's not that straightforward.
Loper Bright ended Chevron Deference, which told courts to defer to agencies when Congress hadn't clearly taken a position, or clearly authorized the agencies to make the rules in question.
In the abstract, I think this is correct. Agencies should only do what they're authorized to do by Congress. That doesn't mean Congress has to make the detailed technical rules, but it means Congress needs to explicitly authorize the agency to evaluate the situation and make rules. That
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"That doesn't mean Congress has to make the detailed technical rules..."
It means that it doesn't matter whether they do or not, because the court decides what congress has authorized.
"...but it means Congress needs to explicitly authorize the agency to evaluate the situation and make rules."
No it doesn't. The court decides what is authorized. Recent court decisions have entirely ignored what is written. See presidential immunity.
"Maybe if that goes on long enough voters will get fed up and start demandin
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Couldn't have written it better. 100% Agreed.
Loper Bright vests in an unelected body of /explicitly/ unaccountable (for life) folks (literally because there is no precedent) unprecedented power over what legislators can do with laws/legislation.
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Exactly. SCOTUS already claimed dominion over Congress, Loper Bright was about reversing precedent over respect for the Executive.
"It's a power grab from the elected part of our government by the unelected, unaccountable, part. Literally nothing Congress does matters any more."
Yes, exactly.
"Loper Bright is insane, and another reason why SCOTUS needs to be reformed."
Trump's stated plan is to add justices to make SCOTUS even more corrupt and easily controlled by private interests.