California Attorney General Xavier Becerra is declaring victory on net neutrality.
That's despite a federal court ruling today that the Trump Administration's Federal Communications Commission (FCC) can abolish rules that keep internet providers from playing favorites.
The important part to Becerra is that the court also said California can go its own way.
The DC Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the FCC's controversial repeal of net neutrality — the rollback of new internet protections that had been imposed under President Barack Obama.
But Ryan Singel, a media and strategy fellow at Stanford Law School's Center for Internet and Society, says the court also handed California a legal victory.
“The federal court ruled that even though the FCC had the right to say we don’t have any power over broadband, they couldn’t tell the states that they don’t have any power,” Singel told KCBS.
So the state law signed by then-Gov. Jerry Brown reestablishing net neutrality — a level playing field on the internet — in California will stand. That’s assuming the Supreme Court doesn't disagree on appeal.
Singel says this will probably force the broadband giants to maintain an open internet, and not block or throttle traffic nationwide.
“We’ve seen California car emissions and that doesn’t confuse people,” he said. “Essentially, what ends up happening is anyone that does services that are not just sold in California — so like a Comcast or Verizon or the big wireless carriers — you just obey the California standards. That’s the easiest way.”