Democratic US senators to force vote on maintaining net neutrality

US Democratic Senator Ed Markey has announced that he and his Democratic colleagues in the Senate will force a vote this spring on a resolution that could end net neutrality.

Ed Markey said did not say when the vote will take place in his Twitter message. There is not much time left, because the final decision to end net neutrality was registered in a federal register last week. From then on, Congress has 60 days to reverse the repeal.

That goes through the Congressional Review Act, which gives the Senate the ability to reverse a decision by an independent agency, such as the FCC, through a resolution. There has been public support for such a resolution from all 49 Democrats and one Republican in the Senate for some time now.

Markey acknowledges, however, that a second Republican still needs to be persuaded to pass the resolution through the narrowest possible majority. Should that happen, the Republican-dominated House of Representatives has yet to consider it. Trump can eventually veto that, although a two-thirds majority in Congress can overturn such a presidential veto.

There is a lot of opposition to the FCC’s decision to abolish net neutrality. Mozilla, among others, has filed a lawsuit against the commission and the same applies to attorneys general from 21 different states. They claim the FCC’s decision violates federal law.

On December 14, the FCC voted to repeal net neutrality rules in the US. Despite strong criticism from many companies, citizens and organizations, the strict rules have been abolished, which means that certain guarantees regarding services, network access and competition are lost. Of the five members of the FCC, three Republicans, including Chairman Ajit Pai, voted to change the rules; the two Democrats voted against.