Governor Inslee signs net neutrality into law in Washington, drawing nationwide attention

Net neu­tral­i­ty will soon be the law of the land again — at least in the Ever­green State — fol­low­ing today’s sign­ing of Sub­sti­tute House Bill 2282 by Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee, offi­cial­ly titled pro­tect­ing an open inter­net in Wash­ing­ton State.

“Today we make his­to­ry: Wash­ing­ton will be the first state in the nation to pre­serve the open inter­net,” Inslee said dur­ing today’s bill sign­ing ceremony.

“We’ve seen the pow­er of an open inter­net. It allows a stu­dent in Wash­ing­ton to con­nect with researchers all around the world — or a small busi­ness to com­pete in the glob­al mar­ket­place. It’s allowed the free flow of infor­ma­tion and ideas in one of the great­est demon­stra­tions of free speech in our history.”

The bill sign­ing is attract­ing nation­wide media cov­er­age, from The New York Times to Time to CNET to Wired to ABC.

The leg­is­la­tion goes into effect June 6th (nine­ty days fol­low­ing ses­sion adjourn­ment), and will restore some impor­tant pro­tec­tions that were out­ra­geous­ly gut­ted late last year by the Fed­er­al Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Commission.

Here is a sum­ma­ry of the bill as pro­vid­ed by non­par­ti­san staff in the House.

Inter­net providers in Wash­ing­ton are pro­hib­it­ed, with some excep­tions, from block­ing con­tent, appli­ca­tions, ser­vices, or non­harm­ful devices; impair­ing or degrad­ing (“throt­tling”) traf­fic on the basis of con­tent, appli­ca­tion, ser­vice, or use of non­harm­ful devices; or favor­ing some traf­fic over oth­ers in exchange for ben­e­fit (“paid prioritization”).

Inter­net providers in Wash­ing­ton are required to dis­close infor­ma­tion about net­work man­age­ment prac­tices, pe per­for­mance, and com­mer­cial terms. A vio­la­tion of the act is enforce­able under the Con­sumer Pro­tec­tion Act, chap­ter 19.86 RCW, sole­ly by the Attor­ney Gen­er­al. The Inter­net Con­sumer Access Account is cre­at­ed in the State Treasury.

Sub­sti­tute House Bill 2282 passed the Leg­is­la­ture with over­whelm­ing sup­port ear­li­er this ses­sion. Only five Repub­li­cans vot­ed nay in the House, and only four­teen vot­ed nay in the Sen­ate. The House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives had pre­vi­ous­ly passed a sim­i­lar bill in 2017, but it was not act­ed on by the Repub­li­can-con­trolled Senate.

Thanks to Man­ka Dhin­gra’s vic­to­ry, net neu­tral­i­ty got a vote in both cham­bers this ses­sion and is now on our books as part of the Revised Code of Washington.

Repub­li­cans like Nor­ma Smith can be proud of their role in ensur­ing that Sub­sti­tute House Bill 2282 got lots of Repub­li­can sup­port on its way to the gov­er­nor’s desk. How­ev­er, Smith is wrong when she says this is not a par­ti­san issue.

Net neu­tral­i­ty is a par­ti­san issue — in every respect.

We would still have net neu­tral­i­ty at the fed­er­al lev­el if just one Repub­li­can had decid­ed not to vote to repeal the FCC’s Open Inter­net Order from 2015.

But instead, all three Repub­li­cans (led by the cor­rupt and con­temptible Ajit Pai), vot­ed to rescind the pro­tec­tions that mil­lions of Amer­i­cans had emphat­i­cal­ly and unequiv­o­cal­ly told them to keep in place through grass­roots lobbying.

The FCC’s two remain­ing Demo­c­ra­t­ic mem­bers (Mignon Clyburn and Jes­si­ca Rosen­wor­cel) were the only com­mis­sion­ers to lis­ten to the people.

Pai’s par­ty-line vote is now being chal­lenged in court by mul­ti­ple plaintiffs.

It is also worth not­ing that all issues are inher­ent­ly par­ti­san — that is what makes them issues to begin with. As we explained here a few weeks ago when we pub­lished a tongue-in-cheek ban­ish­ment of that phrase:

BANISHED: NOT/SHOULDN’T BE A PARTISAN ISSUE

Heard fre­quent­ly on the cam­paign trail. News­flash to can­di­dates, con­sul­tants, and elect­ed offi­cials: Every issue is a par­ti­san issue. That’s what makes it an issue. An issue is com­mon­ly under­stood to be an impor­tant top­ic or prob­lem for debate or dis­cus­sion (Oxford Dic­tio­nar­ies), while is a par­ti­san is any­one who strong­ly sup­ports a par­tic­u­lar cause. Any­one active in pol­i­tics is by nature a par­ti­san, not just those who belong to a polit­i­cal par­ty and call them­selves Democ­rats, Repub­li­cans, Lib­er­tar­i­ans, Greens, and so on. And all issues — even issues dis­cussed and debat­ed in sup­pos­ed­ly “non­par­ti­san” envi­ron­ments — have par­ti­san fissures.

That’s not a bad thing. Let’s stop pre­tend­ing that some issues can or should be above par­ti­san­ship… in a free coun­try that prizes an open exchange of ideas in its pol­i­tics, par­ti­san­ship is to be expected.

Can­di­dates, elect­ed offi­cials: Instead of say­ing x, y, or z shouldn’t be a par­ti­san issue, sim­ply say that you believe par­ti­san dis­agree­ments needn’t be a bar­ri­er to bipar­ti­san coop­er­a­tion that allows us to make mean­ing­ful progress tack­ling an issue.

We look for­ward to the day when net neu­tral­i­ty is no longer an issue at all, but rather sim­ply set­tled and accept­ed law that every­one agrees with.

Maybe that day will nev­er come, but we can dream… and in the mean­time, we’re very proud that Repub­li­cans in this Wash­ing­ton joined Democ­rats in say­ing yes to leg­is­la­tion that will safe­guard our Inter­net freedom.

This new law is almost cer­tain to face legal chal­lenges from foes of Inter­net free­dom. When Ajit Pai and his Repub­li­can cronies on the FCC rescind­ed the Open Inter­net order last year, they tried to pro­hib­it states from pass­ing their own net neu­tral­i­ty laws. That aspect of the Pai FCC order may now be lit­i­gat­ed on mul­ti­ple fronts.

Com­cast and Ver­i­zon may soon be suing the peo­ple of Wash­ing­ton State as part of their cam­paign to destroy Inter­net free­dom. Should they do so, we know Attor­ney Gen­er­al Bob Fer­gu­son will mount a vig­or­ous, unyield­ing defense in court.

If the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment will not uphold our val­ues, then states like Wash­ing­ton should and must step in to fill that vac­u­um. We at NPI are very, very proud that Wash­ing­ton is the first state in the coun­try to pass its own net neu­tral­i­ty law. We are also very proud that Ore­gon is about to get a sim­i­lar (albeit nar­row­er) law.