In a widely anticipated opinion, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in January vacated the anti-discrimination and anti-blocking rules contained in the Federal Communications Commission’s 2010 Preserving the Open Internet Order, but upheld other aspects of the order.
The Court of Appeals decided the FCC was statutorily authorized under the Telecommunications Act of 1996 to regulate the treatment of Internet traffic by broadband Internet service providers (ISPs), but struck down the heart of the net neutrality regulations set forth in the FCC’s Open Internet Order, 25 F.C.C.R. 17905, because they violated the same statute.
