The Supreme Court ruled that the funding mechanism behind a key broadband subsidy program for schools and underserved areas can continue operating. In a decision issued on Friday, the Supreme Court rejected claims that Congress and the FCC’s implementation of the fund is unconstitutional.
The program, known as the Universal Service Fund (USF), helps subsidize telecommunications services for low-income consumers, rural health care providers, and schools and libraries. It’s administered by the Universal Service Administrative Company (USAC), a nonprofit the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) named to run the program. But conservative advocacy group Consumers’ Research, which encourages consumers to “report woke” on its website, sued to upend that structure, charging that the way Congress and the FCC had delegated power over the program’s funding was unconstitutional. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of Consumers’ Research, and the Supreme Court took up the case when the FCC petitioned the court to review it.
Because of what it believes is an unconstitutional structure to fund the USF, Consumers’ Research argued in its brief to the court, “In essence, a private company is taxing Americans in amounts that total billions of dollars every year, under penalty of law, without true governmental accountability.” But USAC isn’t running wild with public funds, the US argued. US Acting Solicitor General Sarah Harris told the justices the law “leaves key policy choices to Congress and is definite and precise enough for courts to tell if FCC followed Congress’s limits when filling in details,” according to SCOTUSblog.
The Supreme Court agreed with this argument. Justice Elena Kagan wrote that Congress “sufficiently guided and constrained the discretion that it lodged with the FCC to implement the universal-service contribution scheme,” adding that the FCC “retained all decision-making authority within that sphere.” Kagan concludes, “Nothing in those arrangements, either separately or together, violates the Constitution.”
NCTA – The Rural Broadband Association, says the USF is critical to providing access to modern communications in rural areas and for low-income families. “Without USF support, it is difficult to make a business case to invest in many rural areas, to sustain networks once they are built, or to keep service rates affordable,” it says on its website.
