House Commerce Republicans Eye Amendments at Net Neutrality Bill Markup
House Commerce Committee Republicans are likely to file “several” amendments to the Save the Internet Act net neutrality bill for consideration at the committee's Wednesday markup but see virtually no chance to defeat the bill outright given prospects for uniform support from panel Democrats, said ranking member Greg Walden, R-Ore., in an interview. HR-1644 and Senate companion S-682 would add a new title to the Communications Act that reverses the FCC order rescinding its 2015 rules. The bill retroactively would restore reclassification of broadband as a Communications Act Title II service (see 1903060077).
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Timely, relevant coverage of court proceedings and agency rulings involving tariffs, classification, valuation, origin and antidumping and countervailing duties. Each day, Trade Law Daily subscribers receive a daily headline email, in-depth PDF edition and access to all relevant documents via our trade law source document library and website.
House Commerce Democrats appear “to have been told” not to oppose HR-1644, which makes it unlikely any of the party's members on the committee will defect, Walden told us. House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Mike Doyle, D-Pa., “said early on there would be no defections” and that appears to be the case now, Walden said. The markup, which also will include unrelated bills, is to begin at 9:30 a.m. in 2123 Rayburn. Doyle appeared optimistic about the bill's prospects, telling reporters Tuesday he anticipates a floor vote next week. HR-1644 had 175 co-sponsors Tuesday night, all of them Democrats.
Doyle and Walden separately said there had been progress, but not yet an agreement, in talks on including an amendment containing some form of the language from Walden's Small Business Broadband Deployment Act. The bill, previously filed in 2017, would exempt ISPs with 250,000 subscribers or fewer from the FCC's 2015 rules. “We may have some support” for including that amendment in HR-1644, Walden said. “I think we'll find common ground on that.” Doyle said “we're still talking” about a potential compromise that would change the threshold number of customers that an ISP would need to have to be exempted from the 2015 rules.
Walden said Republicans are certain to refile amendments containing the text of the three net neutrality bills they filed in February -- the Open Internet Act (HR-1006), Promoting Internet Freedom and Innovation Act (HR-1096) and HR-1101. Republicans touted those measures as pathways to a compromise net neutrality bill that wouldn’t rely on Title II as a legal basis (see 1902250051). The Republicans filed all three amendments before the House Communications Subcommittee's markup of HR-1644 but didn't pursue a vote on them then. The subcommittee cleared the bill on a party-line 18-11 vote (see 1903260064).
Republicans are “looking at all our options” for addressing what they said last week were potential legal inconsistencies in HR-1644's text. Democrats insisted language would lock in place FCC forbearance from many parts of Title II for broadband regulation. Walden and others locking in those forbearances could prevent the FCC from making future potential changes to telecom relay service contribution obligations or USF funding rules. “It's a bit unprecedented to lock an agency's forbearances into statute” and “there are conflicting legal interpretations of what happens there,” Walden told us. “There are different concepts” for addressing those concerns, including “clearing each of the forbearances individually.”
“We haven't made a final decision” whether to file an amendment aimed at using the net neutrality debate to also re-examine online platforms’ content liability protections under Communications Decency Act Section 230, Walden said. He recently argued edge providers' insistence they need the Section 230 protections makes them sound like common carriers (see 1903080032). Walden noted Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s call to regulate online content moderation (see 1904010055), saying it shows “he's starting to realize that this thing's bigger than just Facebook's ability to manage” its content. A more fulsome discussion may be possible, “not in this markup but certainly going forward,” Walden said.