Pai Says Stay of FCC 'End Run' on ICS Should Send Message to Agency

the latest judicial reversal of the FCC in this proceeding," Pai said in a statement Thursday. "Just two weeks ago, that same court stayed the rate regulations that the agency sought to impose on inmate calling services. Nonetheless, the Commission issued a Public Notice claiming that these regulations -- and specifically, their application to intrastate rates -- would take effect anyway. The court’s decision yesterday cut this end-run short." The PN had said that interim 2013 rate caps applied to intrastate ICS because the court in its previous stay had not blocked the FCC's 2015 removal of the word "interstate" from the ICS definition. But a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit stayed the cap's application to intrastate ICS rates, with two Republican appointees -- Judges Karen Henderson and Brett Kavanaugh -- in support and Democratic appointee Judge Patricia Millett in opposition. Pai also said the stay was part of a broader pattern of legal and political reversals the commission should take to heart. "Over the past three weeks alone, the FCC’s decisions have been rebuffed three times in court; rejected in extraordinary fashion by a large, bipartisan group of Senators; and rebuked sharply by Members of the House from both parties," he said. "At some point, even this agency has to acknowledge that the law isn't an invitation to semantic chicanery and good government isn’t discretionary."