AEI Fellow Defends FCC's Cuts to Wi-Fi Funding
The FCC was right to eliminate programs that provided school bus Wi-Fi and internet hot spots to schools and libraries because they went beyond the agency's authority, wrote Daniel Lyons, a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, in a blog post Thursday. Supporters of the programs say that on a practical level, halting the programs puts schools and libraries in a financial bind (see 2510150047).
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.
The U.S. Supreme Court’s Loper Bright decision “made clear that courts, not agencies, are to be the final arbiters of statutory meaning, by applying the best reading of the statute rather than merely a reasonable one,” Lyons wrote. “By extension, this means agencies have a duty to determine the best reading of a statute as well, to survive judicial review.” Adhering to statutory limits “is not only a legal necessity -- it is a fiscal one,” Lyons added, noting that expanding services means “a higher USF surcharge on monthly consumer phone bills -- a surcharge that has already reached the astronomical rate of 38.1%.”