Paul Gluckman

The FCC seeks the dismissal of the petition for review of Maurine and Matthew Molak to vacate the FCC’s Oct. 25 declaratory ruling authorizing funding for Wi-Fi service and equipment on school buses under the commission’s E-rate program (see 2312200040), according to the commission’s motion Tuesday (docket 23-60641) at the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

The FCC’s Nov. 20 order, published Jan. 22 in the Federal Register, purports to implement congressional “instruction” to facilitate equal broadband access under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, but it gives the commission “unprecedented authority to regulate the broadband internet economy,” said the Ohio Telecom Association’s (OTA) petition for review Tuesday (docket 24-3072) in the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

The FCC seeks to dismiss the petition for review filed Dec. 21 by the Insurance Marketing Coalition (see 2312220059) because it is “premature,” and the 11th U.S. Court of Appeals therefore lacks appellate jurisdiction to consider it, said the commission’s motion Friday (docket 23-14125).

In an "innovation-led economy," innovation must “flourish,” but with AI "the protection of people” is critical, Microsoft Vice Chairman-President Brad Smith told the U.S. Chamber of Commerce State of American Business 2024 webinar Thursday. “We need to ensure that humans remain in control of this technology,” Smith said during a Q&A with Harold Kim, the Chamber’s executive vice president-chief legal officer. “We need to have safety and security standards,” he said. Smith found “fascinating” that the Chamber’s report on AI said that unless the government enacts regulation, “we’re likely to have market failure,” he said. “That is not a sentence that most people would expect to see in the executive summary” of a Chamber report, “and yet it is precisely right.” He added, “Most healthy markets for everyday products that can impact people’s safety do have a degree of safety regulation in place,” he said. “The key is to strike the right balance.” At Microsoft, “we’re very much focused on doing this on a global basis,” he said. “We’re interacting with governments in, easily, a few dozen countries at this point as each country is considering this.” Smith didn't mention the New York Times’ AI copyright infringement lawsuit against Microsoft and OpenAI, announced Dec. 27 (see 2312270044), and Kim didn’t ask him about it.

U.S. District Judge Thomas Durkin for Northern Illinois in Chicago granted SoftBank’s motion to dismiss a complaint for lack of jurisdiction and improper venue for its role in T-Mobile's 2020 Sprint buy. But the judge also denied the joint T-Mobile-SoftBank motion to dismiss the antitrust complaint for failure to state a claim, in his signed memorandum opinion and order Thursday (docket 1:22-cv-03189).

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) urged the U.S. Supreme Court to “overturn” Chevron, or at least clarify that statutory silence doesn’t create “an ambiguity triggering Chevron deference,” in an amicus brief Monday (docket 22-451) in support of the petitioners in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo. The docket shows 46 amicus briefs were filed through Monday since the petitioners filed their opening brief July 17 (see [Ref:2307180033), including 31 briefs filed Monday alone. As Georgia governor, Kemp “knows the damage federal regulations can have when federal agencies extend their regulatory purview through self-serving statutory interpretations,” said his brief. He also knows “the difficulty of enacting statewide, comprehensive policy measures in the face of unpredictable intrusion by federal agencies into areas traditionally reserved for state power,” it said. Chevron should be overturned “for a multitude of reasons,” it said. One reason is Chevron’s “propensity to deny judicial remedy to agency interpretations that upset traditional federalism principles,” said Kemp’s brief. Any action SCOTUS takes on Loper Bright “should be evaluated against the backdrop of the looming questions over the proper extent of federal authority into areas traditionally reserved” to the states, it said. SCOTUS should overrule Chevron “and require Congress to clearly call for agency actions that alter the federal-state balance,” it said: “Requiring a clear statement in all circumstances -- not just the most extreme cases -- brings the fundamental question of what Congress can do to the forefront.”

The U.S. Supreme Court should “unequivocally abandon” the contemporary Chevron deference doctrine “because it contradicts Articles I, II, and III of the Constitution,” said an amicus brief (docket 22-451) in support of the petitioners in Loper Bright v. Raimondo submitted Monday by Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, Rep. Mike Johnson, R-La., and 34 other Republican members of Congress.

Liberty Broadband subsidiary GCI Communications agreed to pay $40.24 million to settle allegations it breached the False Claims Act by knowingly inflating its prices and violating FCC competitive bidding rules in connection with its participation in the commission’s Rural Health Care (RHC) program, said DOJ and the FCC in a statement Thursday. Just over $26 million of the settlement amount will be USF restitution payments directly to the FCC under a contemporaneous consent decree with the commission, said the settlement agreement.

Viasat names former Verizon Media Group CEO Guru Gowrappan president ... Bitly hires Kaplan North America’s Elisa Watts as chief people officer and Groupon’s Kevin Raheja as vice president-partnerships, and promotes Jackie Cureton to chief diversity officer ... MIT Solve, social impact innovation initiative of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, makes acting Executive Director Hala Hanna permanent ... Lithium-ion battery developer Microvast names Isida Tushe, ex-mPhase Technologies, general counsel and corporate secretary ... EnCharge AI, edge-cloud AI developer, names Ram Rangarajan, ex-Intel, senior vice president-product and strategy ... UiPath, enterprise automation software company, adds former Walmart Chief Information Officer Karenann Terrell to its board ... Devtech, digital innovation services company, promotes Jelena Suboticki Berar to vice president-people and culture ... Project44, supply chain visibility platform, names Nubank’s Renee Mauldin chief people officer.

UPM “fraudulently tapped” into its roaming agreements with U.S. mobile carriers, “surreptitiously routing calls to Digicel Haiti’s home network from third parties who are not Digicel Haiti customers,” Digicel Haiti said, responding to UPM’s Feb. 21 complaint alleging it violated the Communications Act by banning resale of UPM’s telecommunications service (see 2302270073). Its answer was posted Friday (docket 23-64) at the FCC Enforcement Bureau.