FCC Wins First Battle

Oops--I somehow completely missed this breaking news from earlier this month, publishing a post on the House voting results in lieu of this. They somewhat overlap.

According to this New York Times article from April 4th, the District of Columbia Court of Appeals rejected the lawsuit by Verizon and MetroPCS from earlier this year, claiming the lawsuit is "premature."

Essentially, when the FCC comes up with some regulations, those regulations must be reviewed for compliance with the Paperwork Reduction Act, as well as go through a 60-day public comment period. Then, the Office of Management and Budget will conduct a review with a 30-day comment period. After these steps have taken place, the rules are published to the Federal Register. Only after this, and within 10 days of it, can challenges to the rules be made. Hence, the federal court of appeals hearing this case dismissed it as too soon (ftw).

Although it seems to be a notch in the "win" column for Net Neutrality advocates, the war is early yet and shit's gonna hit the fan soon enough.