Earlier this week Verizon and MetroPCS filed suits contesting the FCC’s new net neutrality statues, the ones that aren’t even as firm as most internet users would hope.
The FCC is now requesting that the DC appeals court in which the suits were filed throw them out, on some solid but incredibly procedural grounds.
In as nutty a nutshell as we can get, people aren’t allowed to sue part of the government in front of the DC circuit court before the thing that they are suing about is published in the Federal Register by that part of the government. The FCC’s new rules have only been announced. Verizon countered by saying that since the new laws would affect their licenses, the suits fall under a law about licensing, which says that you can sue as soon as the law is announced.
But it doesn’t stop there.
The FCC insists that the rule Verizon is citing only applies to individual licenses, and since the net neutrality changes apply to all wireless and internet providers, the suits are still jumping the gun.
At the core of all this back and forth is that the FCC doesn’t want this case heard in the DC circuit court, where three judges threw out the FCC’s sanctions against Comcast for P2P throttling last year. In addition to slowing the process by insisting that the filing was premature in the first place, the FCC is petitioning to move the case to another court.
(via Wired.)
