Court case

A judge approved Facebook’s $5 billion settlement with the Federal Trade Commission over privacy violations—overruling objections that the deal didn’t adequately punish the company. Judge Timothy Kelly of the US District Court for the District of Columbia greenlighted the deal reached in the summer of 2019, which included the $5 billion fine, restrictions on some aspects of Facebook’s business decisions, and ongoing oversight of the social media giant.

On April 17, the FCC and the National Association of Broadcasters each filed a petition asking the Supreme Court to review the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit’s 2019 decision in Prometheus Radio Project v. FCC. The decision was the fourth in a line of intertwined cases dealing with the agency’s media ownership policies since 2004. In Prometheus IV, the Third Circuit remanded the diametrically opposed FCC’s media ownership decisions in 2016 and 2017, as well as the agency’s 2018 incubator program.

Free Press condemned the Federal Communications Commission’s abandonment of its authority to safeguard internet users and promote universal access to an open and affordable internet. The filing was in response to an Oct 2019 US Court of Appeals decision to remand for further consideration by the FCC three key issues related to the agency’s 2017 network neutrality repeal, which also rolled back other vital protections under Title II of the Communications Act.

By this Order, the Federal Communications Commission denies a further extension of time for filing comments and reply comments on the Public Notice seeking to refresh the record in the above-captioned Restoring Internet Freedom and Lifeline proceedings. On April 16, 2020, the City of Los Angeles, the County of Santa Clara, the Santa Clara

The court in Mozilla required the Federal Communications Commission to address how its Restoring Internet Freedom Order, which repealed the agency’s net neutrality rules and removed FCC jurisdiction over broadband, impacted public safety, pole attachments, and the Lifeline program. Instead of opening a new rulemaking proceeding, the FCC issued a Public Notice that fails to explain how the agency ultimately intends to proceed on this matter.

The Solicitor General of the United States, on behalf of the Federal Communications Commission, has asked the Supreme Court to review a US Third Circuit Court of Appeals decision overturning most of the FCC's media ownership deregulation decision, hammering the circuit for what the FCC suggested was serial obstruction of what it had concluded was in the public interest. The FCC said that it has been trying to grant the ownership deregulation for 17 years, thwarted by a series of decisions by a divided panel of the Third Circuit.

Frontier filed for bankruptcy to implement a prearranged $10 billion debt-cutting proposal backed by the telephone and internet-service provider’s bondholders. The telecommunications company is the country’s No. 7 broadband provider by subscribers and the No. 4 incumbent telephone company after AT&T, CenturyLink and Verizon Communications, a legacy of the 1984 breakup of the Ma Bell monopoly. Frontier grew quickly over the past two decades by scooping up phone networks that other companies were eager to unload.

President Donald Trump's reelection campaign is suing a Wisconsin TV station for running an anti-Trump commercial that pieces together audio clips of the president talking about the coronavirus outbreak in a way they argue is misleading and false. The ad by the Democratic super PAC Priorities USA features a series of soundbites in which Trump downplayed the threat posed by the virus, while a chart that is splashed across the screen gradually begins to shoot upward as cases of the virus skyrocketed across the US.

According to the DC Circuit’s logic, the Federal Communications Commission’s jurisdiction over broadband Internet access services now resides in some sort of regulatory purgatory.