Inmate Calling Items Published, Triggering Court Filing Period, Effective Dates, Comment Dates
The FCC's inmate calling service (ICS) order and Further NPRM were published Friday in the Federal Register (here and here), opening the door to court challenges to the order and setting the effective dates of rules and comment deadlines in…
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the new rulemaking. Securus Technologies has said it and other ICS providers will seek a court stay of the order, which capped intrastate and interstate ICS rates, restricted ancillary fees and discouraged provider “site commission” payments to correctional authorities (see 1510220059). The rules will take effect March 17, except that the rates and fees for jails don’t take effect until six months after Friday. The Further NPRM tees up various issues, including possible rate caps for international ICS, with initial comments due Jan. 19 and replies Feb. 1. Meanwhile, the FCC once again asked a court to continue holding in abeyance the challenges of Securus and others to the agency’s 2013 order -- capping interstate ICS rates on an interim basis -- until any litigation over the 2015 order is completed. Securus and others recently asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to dismiss the previous consolidated cases as “moot,” arguing the FCC was trying to keep the 2013 rules “in a state of suspended animation so that they can be brought back to life in the event the 2015 Order is struck down” (see 1512140032). The objections of Securus and others opposed to the agency’s motion “lack merit,” the commission said in reply. “Significantly, the parties in opposition concede that if they (or others) successfully challenge the 2015 Order, there is at least a possibility that the [2013] rules at issue in these cases will return to effect,” the FCC said. “Indeed, they candidly acknowledge that ‘judicial vacatur of new rules will generally reinstate rules previously in force.' … Given the undisputed possibility that the rules challenged in these consolidated cases will have continuing effect -- and thus that the petitions for review are not necessarily moot -- the Court should continue to hold the pending litigation in abeyance.”