FREE SPEECH

The Nation -  The ability of the Federal Communications Commission to establish and maintain net neutrality rules was overturned on the second day of 2025 by a trio of Republican judicial appointees on the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. The three-judge panel’s decision, which upended the FCC’s authority to require Internet service providers to treat all communications equally, dealt a serious blow to efforts to protect the free flow of information that underpins American democracy. What makes the ruling doubly devastating is the fact that the incoming Republican administration—and the corporate-aligned leadership of the Republican-controlled Congress—has shown no sympathy for net neutrality. In fact, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to head the FCC, Brendan Carr, literally wrote the FCC chapter in the Project 2025 memorandum that will serve as an outline for the new administration’s assault on regulation in the public interest.

The appeals court ruling represents a dramatic setback for the multiyear drive by civil rights, civil liberties, and media reform groups to maintain an open Internet in the face of free-spending lobbying by telecommunications corporations that seek to rewrite the rules in their favor. The telecoms have long wanted to gut net neutrality rules, which have been aptly described as “the First Amendment of the internet.” Specifically, they have sought the leeway to create a multi-tiered system of communications where there are fast lanes for missives from multinational corporations and powerful political interests, and slow lanes for civic groups and grassroots organizations, which lack the ability to pay for prioritized services.