The US Justice Department has taken legal action against California after the state’s governor Jerry Brown signed into law the net neutrality legislation passed earlier by state lawmakers, a filing at the Justice Department shows. The news was first reported by the Washington Post. The California law, which is expected to go into effect on 1 January, aims to stop internet providers from blocking or throttling legal apps and websites, and prohibits the prioritisation of content. It also bans zero-rating for specific apps in a point going further than the nation’s 2015 net neutrality laws, since revoked by the FCC in 2017.
The Justice Department said the new California law “ unlawfully imposes burdens on the Federal Government’s deregulatory approach to the internet” and goes against the “light touch framework” the FCC is advocating for the internet. The Justice Department added that under the Constitution, states do not regulate interstate commerce: only the federal government can.
In his own statement, FCC chairman Ajit Pai expressed satisfaction with the Department of Justice suit and agreed the internet was an interstate information service, and therefore under federal control, exclusively. Pai added that the US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit recently reaffirmed that state regulation for information services is preempted by federal law. He said the California law was both unlawful and anti-consumer.
