Federal net neutrality rules are dead at the national level as of January 2, 2025, when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit vacated the FCC’s 2024 Safeguarding and Securing the Open Internet Order. The court’s unanimous ruling, grounded in the Supreme Court’s Loper Bright decision, ended a decade of regulatory oscillation between Title I and Title II broadband classification — and handed enforcement authority, by default, to state legislatures across the country.
2010: The First Open Internet Framework
The FCC’s initial attempt at codified net neutrality came in December 2010. The Open Internet Order (GN Docket 09-191) established three baseline rules: no blocking of lawful content, no unreasonable discrimination in network management, and transparency requirements for broadband providers. The Commission classified broadband as an information service under Title I of the Communications Act — a designation that would prove legally fatal.
In January 2014, the D.C. Circuit vacated the anti-blocking and anti-discrimination rules in Verizon v. FCC, 740 F.3d 623. The court’s reasoning was exact: Title I does not authorize the Commission to impose common carrier obligations. The FCC had built rules requiring common carrier conduct on a statutory foundation that expressly exempted carriers from such treatment. The transparency provision survived; the substantive rules did not.
That ruling forced a decision. The FCC could accept a narrow information-service framework or invoke Title II of the Telecommunications Act to regulate broadband as a telecommunications service, subject to common carrier requirements under 47 U.S.C. § 202 and related provisions. The agency chose Title II.
2015: Title II Reclassification and the 3-2 Vote
On February 26, 2015, the Commission adopted the Open Internet Order under WC Docket 14-28 by a 3-2 party-line vote. Chair Tom Wheeler, joined by Commissioners Mignon Clyburn and Jessica Rosenworcel, voted in favor. Commissioners Ajit Pai and Michael O’Rielly dissented. The order reclassified broadband internet access service (BIAS) as a Title II telecommunications service and established three bright-line rules: no blocking, no throttling, no paid prioritization.
Industry petitioners including the United States Telecom Association and CTIA challenged the reclassification immediately. The D.C. Circuit rejected that argument in United States Telecom Ass’n v. FCC, 825 F.3d 674 (D.C. Cir. 2016), upholding the 2015 Order in full under the Chevron deference framework then operative. The Supreme Court declined to review the case. For roughly two years, the rules stood as settled federal law. ISPs were prohibited from blocking or slowing traffic to specific services, and paid fast-lane arrangements — deals under which content providers would pay carriers for preferential delivery — were barred entirely.
2017: The Pai FCC Rolls Back Title II
The regulatory posture reversed sharply with a change in administration. Chair Ajit Pai moved to dismantle the 2015 framework. The FCC adopted the Restoring Internet Freedom Order under WC Docket 17-108 on December 14, 2017, again on a 3-2 vote. The order reclassified BIAS back to a Title I information service, terminated the bright-line rules, and replaced substantive prohibitions with a disclosure regime requiring ISPs to publish their traffic management practices.
In Mozilla Corp. v. FCC, 940 F.3d 1 (D.C. Cir. 2019), the court upheld the reclassification but issued a partial remand on three issues: federal preemption of state net neutrality laws, implications for public safety communications, and effects on the Lifeline program. The preemption question had immediate practical significance. California had enacted SB 822 in September 2018 — the most comprehensive state net neutrality statute in the country, prohibiting blocking, throttling, paid prioritization, and certain zero-rating arrangements. The Ninth Circuit upheld SB 822 in ACA Connects v. Bonta in January 2022. The Supreme Court declined certiorari, establishing that states could fill the federal regulatory vacuum.
2024: The Biden FCC’s Second Title II Order
With a Democratic majority restored under Chair Jessica Rosenworcel, the FCC opened WC Docket 23-320 and proposed a third reclassification. The Safeguarding and Securing the Open Internet Order was adopted on April 25, 2024, again by a 3-2 vote. The rules mirrored the 2015 framework: Title II reclassification, no-blocking, no-throttling, no-paid-prioritization, with an added general conduct standard targeting harmful practices not otherwise enumerated.
The timing proved decisive. In June 2024 — two months after the order’s adoption — the Supreme Court issued Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, 144 S.Ct. 2244, overruling the Chevron doctrine entirely. Courts would no longer defer to an agency’s reading of ambiguous statutory language. They would determine the best statutory reading independently. ISPs petitioned the Sixth Circuit for a stay; the court granted it in August 2024 and heard expedited oral argument on October 31, 2024. The legal environment that had twice sustained Title II reclassification no longer existed.
January 2025: Sixth Circuit Vacates the 2024 Order
On January 2, 2025, a unanimous three-judge Sixth Circuit panel vacated the Safeguarding Order in its entirety. Applying Loper Bright, the court held that BIAS is an “information service” under the best reading of the Communications Act — not a “telecommunications service” subject to Title II. For mobile broadband, the court found it constitutes a “private mobile service,” placing it outside the Title II framework by statutory definition.
The panel’s language was pointed. Applying Loper Bright “means we can end the FCC’s vacillations.” That holding carries consequences beyond the 2024 Order: it indicates no future Commission can reclassify broadband under Title II without congressional action changing the underlying statutory definitions. The Sixth Circuit denied rehearing. No petition for certiorari had been filed as of May 2026.
Chair Brendan Carr, designated by President Trump in January 2025, welcomed the ruling and stated no intention to pursue Title II reclassification. In July 2025, the Carr FCC formally removed 41 rules and requirements — approximately 2,991 words of regulatory text — adopted under the Biden broadband framework, though those rules were already without legal effect following the January vacatur. For ongoing FCC proceedings in other areas, see the FCC Spectrum Auction Policy Guide.
State Laws and the Resulting Patchwork
The federal void has accelerated state-level activity. California’s SB 822 remains in force and constitutes the most stringent open internet law in the country. Washington and Oregon enacted analogous statutes in 2018, shortly after the Pai FCC’s repeal. New York, New Jersey, and Vermont have adopted procurement-based approaches, requiring ISPs holding state government contracts to comply with net neutrality principles as a condition of contract award.
More than a dozen states had enacted or were actively advancing net neutrality measures as of mid-2025. The legal basis for state authority was affirmed by the Ninth Circuit in ACA Connects v. Bonta and by the Mozilla remand’s rejection of blanket federal preemption. The resulting regime is a patchwork. ISPs operating nationally face inconsistent obligations depending on the state in which a subscriber resides. AT&T, Comcast, and Verizon have historically pledged voluntarily not to block or throttle lawful traffic, but those commitments carry no federal legal force.
Whether Congress will legislate a uniform federal standard — either through a direct net neutrality statute or a statutory redefinition of broadband that would re-enable Title II — remains the central open question. No net neutrality bill advanced out of committee in the 119th Congress. For context on the federal broadband funding programs operating alongside this regulatory vacuum, see the BEAD Program Guide, covering NTIA’s $42.45 billion deployment initiative under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. Without legislative action, the open internet rules that governed the market from 2015 to 2017 and briefly again in 2024 will not return through agency action alone.