A federal appeals court axed the FCC’s net neutrality rules, punctuating a 20-year battle to classify broadband Internet providers as utilities. The Cincinnati-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit — with jurisdiction over Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and Tennessee — said the FCC lacks the authority to prevent ISPs from thwarting access to Internet content. Citing the Supreme Court’s Loper Bright decision from June, the three judge panel wrote that government agencies lack the authority to deploy and administer such regulations. Since Sixth Circuit decisions aren’t precedent in other states, California says it will keep existing rules intact.

“After nearly two decades of fighting, the battle over regulations that treat broadband providers as utilities came to an end” on January 2, reports The New York Times.

The FCC net neutrality rules were implemented under the Obama administration, aimed at preventing ISPs like Verizon and Charter Communications from “blocking or degrading the delivery of services from competitors like Netflix and YouTube,” the goal being to prevent self-dealing through advancing the profiles of services in which the ISPs had investments or vested interests at the expense of third-party content.

“The rules were repealed under President-elect Donald J. Trump in his first administration, but they continued to be a contentious partisan issue that pit tech giants against broadband providers” and the FCC “voted in April to restore net neutrality regulations, which expand government oversight of broadband providers and aim to protect consumer access to the Internet,” NYT summarizes.

NYT describes net neutrality as a Biden administration “hallmark tech policy, which had drawn impassioned support from consumer groups and tech giants like Google and fierce protests from telecommunications giants like Comcast and AT&T.”

The California Internet Consumer Protection and Net Neutrality Act of 2018 is a comprehensive framework to prohibit ISPs from blocking, throttling or prioritizing Internet traffic in the state. Colorado, Maine, New Jersey, Vermont, Oregon and Washington have similar laws, while New York has an executive order on the books.

The Loper Bright decision cited in the the Sixth Circuit opinion gutted a 1984 legal precedent referred to as Chevron that allowed government agencies to implement regulations that functioned as quasi laws. Because Loper was a SCOTUS ruling, it could mean more federal lawsuits aimed at hollowing out the net neutrality rules of individual states.

Los Angeles Times says California’s safeguards are among “the nation’s strongest laws on net neutrality,” writing that some experts suggest that the Sixth Circuit’s decision “along with other rulings and the U.S. Supreme Court’s posture on a separate New York case — has effectively fortified state regulators’ efforts to fill the gap” regarding ISPs and net neutrality.