EFF: California’s Net Neutrality Law: What’s Happened, What’s Next
California’s Net Neutrality Law: What’s Happened, What’s Next Over the weekend, Governor Jerry Brown signed S.B. 822, which guarantees strong net neutrality protections for citizens of California. Within hours, however, the federal government announced its intention to sue California for stepping in where the feds have abdicated responsibility. What happens next is going to be full of procedural issues and technicalities. First, some background. Millions of Americans opposed the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) decision to abandon its authority to enforce net neutrality, competition, and privacy under its Restoring Internet Freedom Order. An expected response to a widely condemned federal act is for the states to take action themselves. And they did. To date, thirty state legislatures have introduced bills that would require their Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to maintain net neutrality as a matter of law. Four of those states (Washington, Oregon, Vermont, and now C...