Larry Lessig and Yochai Benkler of Harvard, Jack Balkin of Yale, Barbara van Schewick of Stanford, and other legal scholars filed a brief in the net neutrality litigation yesterday that explains how the First Amendment applies to net neutrality rules. In short, the cable and phone companies do not have a First Amendment right to block websites or create fast lanes–and similar rules throughout telecom history did not trigger First Amendment scrutiny.
You can read that brief in combination with the brief by WordPress.com, Reddit, Squarespace, Twitter, Yelp, and Medium about the free speech interests on online speech platforms and a brief by Fordham law professor Zephyr Teachout, Penn State professor Sascha Meinrath, and thousands of Internet users, about users’ speech interests in order to get a rounded view of the free speech interests at play.
Of course, telecom and administrative law questions are paramount in this case. Tim Wu of Columbia wrote an excellent brief on telecom legal aspects and Mike Burstein of New York Law School wrote a no less excellent brief on the administrative law aspects. Those are worth reading, as are many other briefs filed yesterday.
Marvin Ammori 