Telco Lobby Sues FCC Over Net Neutrality Rules Yet Again... Just In Case The First Time Didn't Work

from the an-abundance-of-caution dept

A few weeks back, we wrote about USTelecom, a trade association of broadband providers filing a legal challenge to the FCC's net neutrality rules in the DC Circuit. This took some folks by surprise, because the general assumption was that you couldn't file the lawsuit until after the FCC had officially put the rules in the Federal Register, and that hadn't happened yet. However, USTelecom decided to go ahead because part of the new rules fell under a different legal regime, and under that regime, you only have 10 days to file an appeal. So USTelecom decided to file quickly just so they didn't lose out on a procedural issue in missing those 10 days. Today, however, the rules finally went into the Federal Register (and they're set to take effect on June 12), and so USTelecom basically filed the same thing all over again. You can read the new "supplemental" filing [pdf] which is almost word for word the same as the first, except adding the fact that it's doing this just in case it was supposed to really wait for the Federal Register stuff to happen:

This Court has encouraged petitioners, in circumstances such as those here where the triggering event for petitioning for review is unclear, to file a supplemental petition for review.

Basically, this is the same lawsuit, but USTelecom wants to just cover all of its bases to make sure, dammit, that this appeal to the new rules is filed however possible.

Filed Under: fcc, lawsuit, net neutrality
Companies: ustelecom