499 pages of opinions
The Supreme Court on Friday upheld the constitutionality of a multibillion-dollar fund used to expand telephone and broadband services.
The 6-3 ruling is a victory for the Federal Communications Commission, which operates the pot of money in question, known as the Universal Service Fund. It's also a rare win at the Supreme Court for agency power, as the court's conservative majority — which is often skeptical of independent agencies — passed up an opportunity to further weaken the administrative state.
Three liberal justices and three conservatives formed the court's majority. Three other conservatives dissented.
The money in the Universal Service Fund comes from charges collected from telephone providers through a surcharge on customers' bills. It is used for a mix of internet connectivity subsidy programs that help schools, libraries, low-income households and internet providers in rural areas.
In upholding the fund, the justices rejected a bid by some legal conservatives to weaken the administrative state by reviving a controversial theory known as the 'nondelegation doctrine.' Under that doctrine, Congress has extremely limited authority to delegate policymaking decisions to executive branch agencies.
'For nearly three decades, the work of Congress and the Commission in establishing universal-service programs has led to a more fully connected country. And it has done so while leaving fully intact the separation of powers integral to our Constitution,' Justice Elena Kagan wrote in the majority opinion.
The three justices often considered the court's most conservative members, Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch, dissented.
Writing for the dissenters, Gorsuch said the court effectively rewrote the law in order to deem it constitutional. 'We wind up in much the same place, only now with judges, rather than Presidents or bureaucrats, making our laws,' he wrote.
Proponents of the nondelegation doctrine argued that Congress handed away too much power when it instructed the FCC to determine how much money to collect for the Universal Service Fund. And, they say, the FCC in turn handed away too much power when the agency established a private corporation to help administer the fund. In essence, the challengers argued, the fund represents an unconstitutional tax.
If the Supreme Court had fully accepted those arguments and endorsed an aggressive view of nondelegation, experts say it would have imperiled numerous programs across federal agencies.
But the high court, in a 6-3 vote, said the FCC setup didn't violate the nondelegation doctrine.
'Consumers' Research contends that the Act gives the FCC boundless authority, but the provisions it points to show nothing of the kind,' Kagan wrote for the majority, referring to the conservative nonprofit group that brought the case. 'The test Consumers' Research proposes also would throw a host of federal statutes into doubt, as Congress has often empowered agencies to raise revenue without specifying a numeric cap or tax rate.'
The justices' ruling will be a relief for the many telecom players who felt threatened by the case. Supporters of the fund have long warned that a decision striking it down could put millions of beneficiaries at risk. The loss could have squeezed households particularly with lower incomes and in rural areas, where cutting off the aid could have driven up internet prices right as households lost a monthly subsidy helping them pay for it.
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