FCC Revokes California’s Lifeline Verification Authority

WASHINGTON, Nov. 20, 2025 – The Federal Communications Commission on Thursday revoked California’s authority to run its own eligibility and verification system for the federal Lifeline program.

In an order issued by Wireline Competition Bureau chief Joseph Calascione, the FCC said California law AB 1303 has made it “effectively impossible” for the program’s administrator to comply with federal Lifeline operations and integrity obligations.

Enacted on Oct. 6, the new state privacy law bars the California Public Utilities Commission and providers from sharing any applicant information with local, state, or federal agencies, including with immigration authorities, without a subpoena or judicial warrant. It also prohibits CPUC from requiring customers’ Social Security numbers.

The FCC said both protections make it impossible to verify applicants’ eligibility, prevent duplicate enrollments, and guard against waste, fraud, and abuse. 

“Federal dollars should not pay for California’s abuse of the Lifeline program,” Chairman Brendan Carr said, issuing the action. Carr said California also had “a bad track record” of complying with federal Lifeline program rules.

California had been permitted to run its own system

California was one of only three states allowed to run its own Lifeline verification system. In 2020, the Bureau let California, Oregon, and Texas use their state systems in place of the federal one.

The order makes clear that “going forward, federal processes will be used to conduct eligibility verifications in California,” marking a transition deadline of Feb. 1, 2026.

AB 1303 was backed by The Utility Reform Network and authored by Assemblymember Avelino Valencia, D-Anaheim, who said the bill was intended to strengthen privacy protections for low-income Californians.

In a statement issued Thursday, telecom and regulatory attorney for TURN Alexandra Green said the FCC’s decision will force low-income Californians to go through two separate eligibility checks, one for the state program and one for the federal, a change the group argues will add bureaucracy and ultimately raise the cost of phone service for hundreds of thousands of households.

“The FCC’s decision to no longer trust California to do its own eligibility verification means that customers will have to be separately reviewed by each program,” Green said.

'Political disdain for California'

“The federal government's political disdain for California seems to be the driving force behind this order, which will only result in increasing the cost of phone service in both rural and urban areas,” she added.

“AB 1303 provides the CPUC the flexibility to ensure that all eligible households can apply for California LifeLine. It also gives consumers more control over who their data is shared with. What AB 1303 does not do is provide a secondary method to access state LifeLine funds without verification,” she said.

“Low-income Californians should not be the targets of random government intrusion simply because they want affordable telephone service,” TURN's executive director Mark Toney said when AB 1303 was introduced. 

Since the 1980s, the state has operated its own LifeLine program that is exclusively funded by California customers and that provides discounts on the monthly phone bills of low-income households. There will be no impact on California’s state LifeLine program, only the federal Lifeline. 

California recently expanded its state LifeLine to offer $20 to $39 discounts for home Internet connections through a three-year pilot. But the federal Lifeline remains essential for millions of households in need of discounted home phone and cell phone services.