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Deeply Unserious 5th Circuit Declares $8 Billion Rural FCC Broadband Subsidy Program ‘Unconstitutional’
The FCC has long run an $8 billion federal subsidy program to help bring phone and broadband services to lower income homes and schools called the Universal Service Fund. The bipartisan program has…
“A narrow majority of the Fifth Circuit used a radical, unsupported constitutional theory to attack the long-standing foundation of a critical program for supporting the deployment of communications networks in rural areas, at schools and libraries, and to low-income consumers,” Blake Reid, professor at Colorado Law, told Techdirt. Given the 1996 Telecommunications Act is a murky and badly written mess, any consumer protection effort the FCC engages in is now subject to being dismantled post Chevron — especially if the courts don’t hold much respect for precedent or foundational logic. Ideally that’s where Congress would step in to pass better-written new laws and reforms (whether it’s related to the USF, net neutrality, or broadband privacy), but given the unprecedented levels of corruption and dysfunction, that’s simply not happening.
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