The Supreme Court declined to take up legal challenges to the Obama-era net neutrality rules, effectively ending the legal dispute over implementation of the 2015 Internet regulations.
The court rejected Monday requests from the telecommunications industry and related groups for the justices to throw out a lower court ruling upholding the net neutrality rules, which were designed to ensure all content on the Internet is treated equally by Internet service providers. The Federal Communications Commission had voted 3-2 along party lines in December to repeal the net neutrality rules.
Under the rules, adopted by the FCC in 2015, Internet service providers were prohibited from blocking, throttling, or interfering with traffic from certain websites.
Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh, appointed by President Trump to the court, did not participate in the consideration or decision regarding the petitions to the high court.
Kavanaugh heard a challenge to the net neutrality rules while serving as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch said they would have granted the petitions but sent the case back to the lower court with instructions to dismiss the cases as moot.
The new regulations approved by the FCC are being challenged in federal court.
