Carr Eliminates Already Defunct Net Neutrality Regulations
‘Why not? I figured people couldn’t die a second time,’ FCC Chairman said.
WASHINGTON, July 14, 2025 – People may not be able to die twice, but regulations certainly can.
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr announced Friday that the agency was removing 41 rules or requirements, totaling 2,991 words “concerning utility-style burdens on the Internet adopted under the Biden Administration.”
As the announcement itself noted, the deleted rules were already out of effect, having been struck down by the Sixth Circuit in January 2025. But, though the regulations had been struck down, they remained in the FCC’s list of Rules and Regulations, albeit unenforced.
The FCC’s announcement tied the deletion of the defunct regulations to its “Delete, Delete, Delete” initiative, which sought to reduce “unnecessary regulatory burdens.”
“The Commission has been conducting a thorough review of its regulations to identify unnecessary rules, including those made obsolete by Court decisions,” the announcement read. “These deletions will clean up the Commission’s regulations and reduce confusion for communications service providers.”
Some of the regulations eliminated Friday concerned the FCC’s 1996 Local Competition Order. In 2000, the Eighth Circuit ruled against portions of the order, though the corresponding regulations were never removed.
The other regulations eliminated Friday were tied to former FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel’s 2024 attempt to reclassify internet service providers as Title II common carriers under the Communications Act. Those rules first appeared in 2015 during the Obama administration, but were nixed under Trump.
Had Rosenworcel’s proposed regulations stood, ISPs would have been forbidden from blocking or throttling internet traffic, and would have been subject to additional FCC oversight on a variety of matters.
On Saturday, Carr posted to X an image of a headline from The Verge describing the FCC’s removal of the rules. Carr captioned the image with, “Why not? I figured people couldn’t die a second time.”
Not everyone was happy with Carr’s decision. Free Press vice president of policy and general counsel Matt Wood called the announcement “political theater,” and vowed to continue fighting to appeal the Sixth Court’s decision.
“The FCC’s so-called deletion today is little more than political grandstanding,” Wood said. “What’s sad about it is Brendan Carr, as usual, prioritizing political theater and ideological obeisance over actual legal reasoning and policy impacts.”
“There’s no need to delete currently inoperative rules, much less to announce it in a summer Friday order,” Wood said. “The only reason to do that is to score points with broadband monopolies and their lobbyists…”
Member discussion