D.C. Memo: Ex-FCC Commissioner O’Rielly Urges Court to Void Net Neutrality
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Sixth Circuit: History supports the ISPs fighting the FCC's Net Neutrality rules in federal court, according to former Republican FCC Commissioner Michael O’Rielly. "The historical actions and positions of Congress and the FCC strongly refute any authority of the agency to reclassify broadband as a Title II telecommunications service. The current FCC’s attempt to assert and exercise such sweeping authority over broadband should be rejected," O’Rielly said an amicus brief Monday with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, the Cincinnati-based court that stayed the FCC's rules on Aug. 1. O’Rielly said communications law clearly classified ISPs as information service providers, not as common carriers under the rules adopted in April by the FCC under Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel. Furthermore, he said Congress has never passed Net Neutrality legislation to reverse FCC treatment of Internet access as an unregulated information service. "Over the years, Congress itself has had multiple opportunities to object to or repudiate the FCC’s repeated determinations that broadband is an information service rather than a telecommunications service. But it has never done so," O’Rielly said. O’Rielly, who served at the FCC from 2013 to 2020, has his own consulting firm and is affiliated with a few conservative think tanks, including the Free State Foundation and the Hudson Institute.
