Friday, February 1, we had approximately 4.5 hours of oral argument before Judge Millett, Judge Wilkins, and Senior Judge Williams. You can listen to a recording of the oral argument here. As everyone who does this for a living will tell you, you can’t judge the outcome by what happens at oral argument. Because that’s the biggest set of tea leaves we have that can tell us anything about the black box of the court making its decision, however, we all speculate shamelessly. Unsurprisingly, Williams seemed most favorable to the FCC. He dissented in USTA v. FCC, and generally prefers deregulatory policy choices. Millett, as expected, pushed both sides hard. But ultimately both she and Wilkins seemed to come down against the FCC on several issues, including a lengthy discussion of the Section 257 argument I highlighted last week.
My colleague John Bergmayer has this summary of the substance of the argument. I want to just highlight one theme, the refusal of the FCC to be honest about the expected policy consequences of its actions. I highlight this for several reasons. First, people need to understand that while the agency can always change its mind, it has to follow the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), which includes addressing the factual record, acknowledging the change in policy from the previous FCC, and explaining why it makes a different decision this time around. As I have noted for the last couple of years, there is a lot of confusion around this point. On the one hand, it doesn’t mean you have to show that the old agency decision was wrong. But on the other hand, it doesn’t mean you get to pretend like the old opinion and its old factual record don’t exist. Nor do you get to ignore the factual record established in this case.
It was on these points that Millett and Wilkins kept hammering the FCC, and where they are likely in the biggest trouble in terms of the Order. Because FCC Chair Ajit Pai has pretty much made it his signature style to ignore contrary arguments and make ridiculous claims about his orders, this problem has already chomped the FCC on the rear end pretty hard (ironically, in an opinion released on Friday), and will likely continue to do so.
More below . . .