Supreme Court To Decide Whether Helping Poor Rural Americans Get Broadband Is ‘Unconstitutional’
(www.techdirt.com)https://www.techdirt.com/2024/12/02/supreme-court-to-decide-whether-helping-poor-rural-americans-get-broadband-is-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 historically bipartisan program has long been funded by a fee on traditional phone lines. But with traditional phone lines dying, there’s been a long, ongoing discussion about how to best continue to fund the program.
The program has certainly seen fraud and abuse (much, much improved in more recent years). But it’s also done a mammoth amount of good getting neglected communities connected to the internet. A lot of folks like to singularly focus on the former to support the belief that government is always inherently bad.
The program is definitely in need of reform. Enter Republicans, who aren’t so much interested in how to fix the program, as they are redirecting taxpayer funds to their friends at companies like AT&T. Republicans insist they have the fix: to impose a massive new tax on “woke” tech companies and services (read: you), then give it to telecom giants like AT&T with a long, proud history of subsidy fraud.
“The last time the Supreme Court invoked what is known as the non-delegation doctrine to strike down a federal law was in 1935. But several conservative justices have suggested they are open to breathing new life into the legal doctrine.”
