The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D. C. Circuit should overturn the FCC’s implementation of the 2023 Low Power Protection Act because it favors full-power stations, unlawfully uses data from Nielsen, and limits the number of Class A stations, according to a final brief and final reply brief from Radio Communication Corp. Tuesday. The FCC’s Class A license allocation system is “designed to protect NAB’s Clients” -- the brief defines NAB’s Clients as full-power stations -- and turns “the LPPA’s LPTV protection purpose on its head.” The FCC has said that its LPPA order followed the plain direction of the LPPA's text: The agency “correctly interpreted the statutory requirement that an eligible station ‘operate in a Designated Market Area with not more than 95,000 television households’ to mean that an eligible station must be located within a Designated Market Area that has no more than 95,000 television households,” the FCC has said. RCC has argued that the term “operates” refers to a station’s community of license rather than its Nielsen-designated market area. “There is no way for the general public, or this Court, to know how Nielsen created and maintains DMAs or even ascertain what the boundaries of Class A licensing markets are without first subscribing to Nielsen’s service in exchange for payment,” RCC said. “We do not know, and cannot verify, whether parties paid money to Nielsen to have the DMAs drawn after Congress began working on the LPPA legislation, nor whether Nielsen has altered DMAs since the LPPA was adopted, or might alter the DMAs in the future based upon its own decision-making or because a broadcaster pays for the change.” The case isn't scheduled for oral argument. Instead, a D.C. Circuit merits panel will decide it on briefs alone.
The FCC, intervenors and amici who benefit from E-rate funding contend that authorizing Wi-Fi on school buses will advance students’ education, but there’s “powerful and growing evidence to doubt that claim,” petitioners Maurine and Matthew Molak said in their 5th U.S. Circuit Appeals Court reply brief Monday (docket 23-60641).
To fulfill its “broad mandate” under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the FCC in the digital discrimination order on review “adopted rules that prohibit practices with unjustified discriminatory effects on access to broadband service,” plus intentional discrimination, the commission’s brief said Tuesday (docket 24-1179) in the 8th U.S. Circuit Appeals Court.
The FCC’s motion that would transfer the consolidated challenges of the commission’s net neutrality order to the U.S. Appeals Court for the D.C. Circuit (see 2406100044) is part of a trend of federal agencies that attempt to use venue-transfer motions “to steer major regulatory challenges out of the regional circuits,” the U.S. Chamber of Commerce said in a 6th Circuit amicus brief Friday in opposition (dockets 24-7000, 24-3449, 24-3450, 24-3497, 24-3504, 24-3507, 24-3508, 24-3510, 24-3511, 24-3517, 24-3519, 24-3538). This trend harms litigants and courts as it saddles them with “burdensome threshold litigation” in cases that often already involve “fast-paced litigation over stays and other interim relief,” the chamber said. In addition, the trend harms the regulated public, “impairing its right to hold agencies accountable for unlawful conduct in the jurisdictions where that conduct harms the public.” The FCC’s transfer motion is “especially inappropriate” because it would “undermine” the judicial lottery system, “reintroducing through the back door of transfer motions the forum shopping that Congress sought to eliminate when it established the current system of random selection in 1988,” it said. But the FCC stands firm in its support of the transfer, its reply said Friday. This latest round of “follow-on litigation” involves essentially the same parties, legal landscape, and issues that the D.C. Circuit “has been grappling with” through each successive net neutrality case and order, the FCC said. Should the litigation proceed in the 6th Circuit instead of the D.C. Circuit, the 6th Circuit and the parties “would need to expend considerable resources to walk the same ground already traveled during the previous years of litigation in the D.C. Circuit,” it said.
The chairman of two mobile communications products companies and Sonim Technologies developed products using trade secrets, intellectual property and other confidential information stolen from Reliance Communications, alleged a Defend Trade Secrets Act (DTSA) complaint Friday (docket 2:24-cv-04433) in U.S. District Court for Eastern New York.
The ISP petitioners’ consolidated motion to stay the FCC’s net neutrality order (see 2406110073) “attempts to replay the same legal challenges they ran unsuccessfully in 2015,” said the commission's opposition Tuesday in the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals (dockets 24.7000, 24.3449, 24.3450, 24.3497, 24.3504, 24.3507, 24.3508, 24.3510, 24.3511, 24.3517, 24.3519, 24.3538).
Nationwide lender Premium Capital Funding promotes its services by engaging in unsolicited telemarketing, “harming thousands of consumers in the process,” alleged Stephanie Brown’s Telephone Consumer Protection Act class action Monday (docket 8:24-cv-01469) in U.S. District Court for Middle Florida. Brown seeks damages and injunctive relief to halt Premium Capital’s “illegal conduct,” which has resulted in the invasion of privacy, harassment, aggravation and “disruption” of the daily lives of thousands of individuals, said her complaint. The Lakeland, Florida, plaintiff also seeks statutory damages on behalf of herself and members of the class, plus “any other available legal or equitable remedies,” it said. Any of Premium Capital’s violations were knowing, willful and intentional, making Brown and the class eligible for treble damages under the TCPA, it said. Brown personally listed her cellphone number with the national do not call registry in June 2009, and she has since received an email from the registry confirming her number’s appearance on the listing, said the complaint. Yet Premium Capital sent at least four unsolicited text messages to her number, addressed to a person unknown to her and named Douglas, it said. The plaintiff, through counsel, received an email confirmation from Premium Capital asserting that the text messages she received were a “mistake,” due to the company texting to an “incorrect number,” it said. Premium Capital thus acknowledged that it didn’t have consent to send the “violating text messages,” it said. At no point in time did Brown provide Premium Capital with her express written consent to be contacted, in violation of the TCPA’s Section 227(a)(5), it said. Premium Capital “may not allege consent through a third-party lead generator, as the FCC has prohibited such actions,” it said.
The FCC asked the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to dismiss Consumers' Research's challenge of the agency's USF contributions methodology. Consumers' Research "made the same arguments before the Sixth and Eleventh Circuits," the agency said in a petition filed Monday (docket 22-60008), adding the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review the decisions (see 2406110008). "Those decisions are thus final and not subject to further review," the FCC said, and "petitioners are precluded from raising the same claims here." Also, Consumers' Research filed a motion for the D.C. Circuit for a voluntary dismissal regarding one of its challenges to the USF contribution factor.
Granting the FCC’s motion to transfer the consolidated challenges to the commission’s net neutrality order to the U.S. Appeals Court for the D.C. Circuit would “subvert” Congress’ preference for “dispersed regulatory challenges rather than specialized courts,” CTIA, USTelecom and eight other groups told the 6th Circuit in a joint opposition brief Monday (dockets 24-7000, 24-3449, 24-3450, 24-3497, 24-3507, 24-3508, 24-3510, 24-3511, 24-3517, 24-3519).
Tegna hires Artsy CEO Michael Steib to succeed David Lougee as president-CEO and a director, effective Aug. 12, when Lougee will retire from those roles and become senior adviser; Tegna also adds former Away President Catherine Dunleav, also former NBC Universal, and Denmark West, X's head-market intelligence and strategic engagements, to its board as independent directors ... Bloomberg Industry Group appoints Maite Salazar, ex-Colibri Group, as chief marketing officer ... Tech Coalition adds Sharone Franco, Yubo head-legal and public policy, to its board ... Sean Spivey, former senior policy adviser in NTIA’s Office of Spectrum Management and also ex-FCC, joins Wilkinson Barker as a partner-telecom ... Spectra7 announces the retirement of CEO Raouf Halim, with board Chair Ron Pasek becoming interim CEO ... Pax8 promotes global engineering lead Eric Stevens to chief AI officer.