While the Federal Communications Commission
("FCC") has repeatedly reversed course on whether
broadband internet access service ("broadband") is a
common-carrier telecommunications service under
federal law, one thing has remained constant: no
government — state or federal — has regulated the
rates consumers pay for broadband service. In 2021, New York sought to become the first government to
do so, setting $15 and $20 caps on the price that lowincome consumers pay for broadband. A federal district court correctly enjoined the New York Attorney
General from enforcing that law, but a divided panel
of the Second Circuit vacated that injunction.
The Sixth Circuit, in contrast, recently found that
challengers to the FCC's 2024 decision to subject
broadband to common-carrier regulation are likely to
succeed on the merits and stayed that agency decision.
Therefore, at the federal level, broadband remains —
and likely will remain — an interstate information
service under Title I of the Communications Act of
1934. Congress protected those services from rate
regulation and other common-carrier treatment.
Although New York has agreed not to enforce its
rate-regulation law while the Court resolves this petition, New York continues to assert that it has the right
to do what the FCC cannot. This case thus presents
the question whether broadband services will remain
protected from common-carrier treatment and rate regulation by individual States:

Whether the Communications Act preempts New
York's broadband rate-regulation law.

Whether the Communications Act preempts New York's broadband rate-regulation law