September 10, 2024
Federal Communications Commission Chair Jessica Rosenworcel told educators the agency will ask the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a recent Fifth Circuit decision against the Universal Service Fund, the federal program that subsidizes telecom service to low-income and hard-to-reach areas.
July 30, 2024
From Alaska to Arkansas, thousands of rural healthcare clinics rely on internet subsidies from the Federal Communications Commission to provide telehealth services to far-flung or low-income patients. A Fifth Circuit ruling threatens to disrupt services for some living outside urban centers or in healthcare "deserts."
July 25, 2024
Free-market groups asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday to take another look at their challenge to the Federal Communications Commission's low-income and rural subsidy programs after the Fifth Circuit ruled the system was unconstitutional.
June 10, 2024
The U.S. Supreme Court declined Monday to review whether the country's fee-based telecom subsidy system unlawfully delegates taxing powers from Congress to the Federal Communications Commission and a privately run administrator.
May 21, 2024
Free market groups urged the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday to review their challenge to the Federal Communications Commission's subsidy programs, saying the Fifth Circuit could create a circuit split "at any time" by rejecting the fee-based system.
May 06, 2024
The Federal Communications Commission has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to forgo review in two constitutional challenges to the agency's Universal Services Fund brought by free-enterprise groups, arguing that the appeals were filed too early and are based on a speculative circuit split that hasn't formed yet.
February 09, 2024
Officials from 21 Republican-led states are urging the U.S. Supreme Court to torpedo the Federal Communications Commission's system for subsidizing rural telecom and phone services, calling on the justices to grant a request from a free market group to take up its challenge to the FCC's fee structure.
January 12, 2024
The federal subsidy system that helps pay for rural telecom services and low-income phone discounts could soon face a reckoning before the U.S. Supreme Court, thanks to a quartet of near-identical legal challenges to the fees imposed on service providers to raise the funds.
December 14, 2023
The Eleventh Circuit on Thursday upheld the constitutionality of the Federal Communications Commission's Universal Service Fund, in another blow to efforts by free-enterprise groups to have it declared an unlawful delegation of legislative authority.