October 04, 2018
LAWT News Service
This week Senators Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) and Kevin de León (D-Los Angeles), Assemblymember Miguel Santiago (D-Los Angeles), and supporters of Senate Bill 822 — which enacts the strongest net neutrality standards in the nation — gathered in support of the new law following the Trump Administration’s decision to sue California. SB 822 was signed by Governor Brown on Sunday and goes into effect on January 1, 2019.
“Within minutes of Governor Brown signing our net neutrality bill into law, Jeff Sessions came out of his cave and sued California to strike down the law,” said Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco). “Sessions and his boss Donald Trump aren’t satisfied with the federal government repealing net neutrality. In their world, *no one* is allowed to protect an open internet. We’ve been down this road before: when Trump and Sessions sued California and claimed we lacked the power to protect immigrants. California fought Trump and Sessions on their immigration lawsuit - California won - and California will fight this lawsuit as well. I have complete confidence that Attorney General Xavier Becerra will do a great job defending this law.”
“We’ve passed the strongest Net Neutrality protections in the nation,” said Senator de León (D-Los Angeles). “Because California will not surrender its progress to an Administration dead-set on rolling it back. In today’s digital world, the internet is critical to free speech, economic justice, and the integrity of our democracy. I’m proud to have fought alongside Senator Wiener, Assemblymember Miguel Santiago, and Assemblymember Rob Bonta on this landmark measure.”
“This measure ensures that we, in California, will maintain a free and open internet that doesn’t discriminate or price users or content differently. I applaud Governor Brown for signing the strongest net neutrality bill in the country,” said Assemblymember Miguel Santiago (D-Los Angeles). “California will now lead by example and show the Trump Administration that their backwards agenda is unacceptable.”
Santiago added, “The fight for social change and progressive values is directly tied to a free and open internet. Citizens United, the Janus decision and now the threat of a Supreme Court nomination under Trump makes this net neutrality framework more important than ever. It is essential to our Democracy and the future of our movement powered by people and I thank Senator Wiener for leading the charge on this effort.”
SB 822 stands for the basic proposition that the role of internet service providers (ISPs) is to provide neutral access to the internet, not to pick winners and losers by deciding (based on financial payments or otherwise) which websites or applications will be easy or hard to access, which will have fast or slow access, and which will be blocked entirely.
The measure contains strong net neutrality protections and prohibits blocking websites, speeding up or slowing down websites or whole classes of applications such as video, and charging websites for access to an ISP’s subscribers or for fast lanes to those subscribers. ISPs will also be prohibited from circumventing these protections at the point where data enters their networks and from charging access fees to reach ISP customers. Moreover, SB 822 bans ISPs from violating net neutrality by not counting the content and websites they own against subscribers’ data caps.