Net neutrality win could be short-lived

The Boston Globe reports:

Legal experts say this “reclassification” is deeply vulnerable. University of Pennsylvania professor Christopher Yoo, for example, says “reclassification of broadband service would not survive judicial review.” Two of the five current FCC Commissioners also warned these rules would not survive first contact with the courts. That is because Congress specifically defined an “information service” to include “a service . . . that provides access to the Internet” — like broadband. “Telecommunications,” by contrast, only covers pure transmission of information without any processing or manipulation — a definition that cannot apply to the Internet, which could not function without advanced processing and manipulation of data.

The FCC regulations have other legal issues. An agency is held to a particularly high standard when it reverses its prior positions or abandons arguments it previously made in court. The FCC’s about-face on this issue thus creates an extra hurdle.

Other lawyers say the process the FCC used was also flawed – since its first announcement focused heavily on following the roadmap suggested by the federal courts, while the final rules abandoned that approach in favor of radical reclassification.

Obama regime update.