It’s unconstitutional for Washington state to tax federal Lifeline reimbursements, the Washington Supreme Court unanimously decided Thursday. Siding with T-Mobile subsidiary Assurance Wireless, the state’s high court reversed a lower court’s opinion because it found that the Universal Service Administrative Co. (USAC) is the FCC’s instrumentality and thus immune from state taxes.
Adam Bender
Adam Bender, Senior Editor, is the state and local telecommunications reporter for Communications Daily, where he also has covered Congress and the Federal Communications Commission. He has won awards for his Warren Communications News reporting from the Society of Professional Journalists, Specialized Information Publishers Association and the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing. Bender studied print journalism at American University and is the author of dystopian science-fiction novels. You can follow Bender at WatchAdam.blog and @WatchAdam on Twitter.
An Ohio court can and should call Google Search a common carrier, the state argued Friday. In a separate opposition brief, Google protested that it’s nothing like a common carrier: "Google is not a 'dumb pipe' or 'mere conduit.' The Ohio Chamber of Commerce supported the company, arguing in a Thursday amicus brief that Ohio’s attempt to regulate the search company would be “anti-business.”
The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals returned a U.S. Chamber of Commerce challenge of Maryland’s digital ad tax to a state district court. In an opinion Wednesday (case 22-2275), the appeals court agreed with the U.S. District Court in Baltimore (case 21-cv-00410) that the Tax Injunction Act (TIA) prevents federal courts from reviewing the tax. However, it disagreed that a decision on the constitutionality of a related pass-through ban was moot.
An Ohio law requiring age verification to access social media runs afoul of the U.S. Constitution, NetChoice said Friday. The tech industry group asked the U.S. District Court for Southern Ohio to block the 2023 law from taking effect Jan. 15. Ohio Lt. Gov. Jon Husted (R) lambasted the lawsuit as “cowardly but not unexpected.”
Washington state’s argument for taxing federal Lifeline support depends on the Washington Supreme Court agreeing that the Universal Service Administrative Co. is not the U.S. government’s instrumentality, agreed Deputy Solicitor General Cynthia Alexander, representing the state revenue department, at oral argument Thursday. State justices zeroed in on this question -- and practical impacts -- as they weighed whether federal Lifeline funds subsidizing low-income consumers’ phone lines are subject to the state’s retail sales tax.
T-Mobile faced tough questions Tuesday from a 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel on the carrier’s argument that states must align with the FCC’s revenue-based USF contribution mechanism. The court heard T-Mobile and subsidiaries’ challenge to a U.S. District Court for Northern California March 31 decision not to block the California Public Utilities Commission’s April 1 change to a connections-based method.
The Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission properly decided that FirstEnergy charged unlawfully high pole-attachment rates to Verizon, a Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court majority decided Thursday. The PUC also appropriately determined the length of retroactive relief, despite Verizon’s arguments that refunds should go further back.
The narrow targeting of Maryland’s so-called tax on digital ad revenue may suggest it’s primarily a punishment that federal courts are permitted to review under the U.S. Tax Injunction Act (TIA), 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Julius Richardson said at oral argument Wednesday. The 4th Circuit is reviewing an appeal by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce of the March 2022 decision by the U.S. District Court in Baltimore to dismiss the Chamber’s challenge of the tax, plus the district court’s December dismissal of the Chamber’s challenge to the tax’s pass-through ban (case 22-2275). The 4th Circuit should remand all counts back to district court, argued the Chamber’s attorney Michael Kimberly of McDermott Will.
A big question about subject-matter jurisdiction will require more briefs in a case on whether cities are entitled to franchise fees from streaming TV providers, said 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Frank Easterbrook. At oral argument Tuesday in City of East St. Louis v. Netflix (case 22-2905), judges also voiced skepticism about the merits of the Illinois city’s arguments.
Cricket Wireless violated Maryland’s Consumer Protection Act (CPA) before and after its 2014 acquisition by AT&T by not disclosing the CDMA wireless network’s imminent shutdown, the Appellate Court of Maryland ruled Tuesday (case 416, September 2022 term). The court disagreed with a lower court reversing the Maryland attorney general's consumer protection division (CPD) finding of a pre-merger violation, while rejecting AT&T’s appeal of a post-merger violation.