House Speaker Nancy Pelosi reportedly said Democrats in Congress will try to restore net neutrality rules.
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Democrats in the US Congress will introduce a bill Wednesday to bring back net neutrality rules that were repealed in 2017, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi reportedly said Monday.
House Democrats will work with the Senate to pass the “Save the Internet Act,” Pelosi said in a letter to lawmakers, according to Reuters. The text of the reported bill hasn’t been released.
Net neutrality, which lasted from 2015 to 2018, banned broadband providers from slowing or blocking internet access or charging companies more for faster access. In December 2017, the Republican-led Federal Communications Commission voted to repeal Obama-era net neutrality rules.
Democrats in Congress have said the repeal allows for large broadband and wireless companies to “control people’s online activities.” Tech companies such as Amazon and Facebook, as well as tech pioneers such as Tim Berners-Lee, have spoken out against net neutrality’s repeal.
In August, attorneys general from 22 states, as well as activist groups and companies including Mozilla, filed suit, alleging the FCC arbitrarily rolled back net neutrality rules and overstepped its authority to ban states from passing their own regulations.
And in October, California reached an agreement with the US Department of Justice not to enforce its own net neutrality law, saying it’d hold off until questions about the FCC’s authority to pre-empt states from adopting their own net neutrality laws were answered in federal appeals court.
The FCC declined to comment. A representative for Pelosi didn’t respond to a request for comment.
First published March 4.
Update, March 5, 2:41 p.m. PT: Adds background on net neutrality.