On January 2, 2025, a federal appeals court threw out the government's net neutrality rules. The Sixth Circuit held that broadband providers offer an "information service," not a "telecommunications service," and that the FCC therefore lacks the authority to regulate them the way it regulates phone companies.

That legal theory did not come out of nowhere. Bob Latta had been trying to write it into federal law for a decade.

Latta is the Republican congressman for Ohio's 5th District. He sits on the House Energy and Commerce Committee — the committee with jurisdiction over the FCC — and chairs its Energy Subcommittee. Across four bills in four different Congresses, he pursued one goal with unusual consistency: make sure the federal agency that oversees your internet provider can't do much to it.

The four bills

Every one of these is Latta's own. He is the lead sponsor on all of them.

Net neutrality is a simple idea with a clunky name. It means your internet provider has to carry all lawful traffic the same way — it can't slow down a video service that competes with its own, and it can't charge a website extra to reach you at full speed. The fight over it has always been about one technical question: is broadband a "telecommunications service" the FCC can regulate like a utility, or an "information service" it mostly can't?

Latta has answered "information service" in legislative text, over and over, since 2014.

The cable industry has had his ear on other things too. In 2013 he introduced H.R. 3196, which would have barred the FCC from requiring cable companies to build set-top boxes with separable security — a long-running industry priority that had nothing to do with net neutrality and everything to do with keeping the box in your living room under the cable company's control.

The one that sounds like the opposite of what it is

The 2019 bill is worth reading closely, because the title does a lot of work. It's called the "Open Internet Act."

It does contain real rules. Under it, a broadband provider "shall not block lawful content, applications, or services" and "shall not unjustly or unreasonably discriminate in transmitting lawful traffic." Good.

Now the rest of it:

• It bans the FCC from using Title II at all. In the bill's words: "The Commission may not impose regulations on broadband internet access service or any component thereof under title II." That is the entire ballgame — it permanently forecloses the strongest tool the agency has.
• You can't sue. "Nothing in this section shall be construed to authorize any private right of action in court."
• No damages, ever. The FCC can fine a provider up to $2 million for a willful violation, but "may not order the payment of damages." If your provider throttles you, nobody who was harmed gets paid.
• Nothing about paid prioritization. The phrase does not appear in the bill. Internet fast lanes — the thing most people picture when they picture net neutrality dying — are not addressed.

So: a short list of duties, no way to enforce them yourself, no money for anyone harmed, and a statutory padlock on the agency that would otherwise write stronger rules. If you were an internet provider drafting your ideal net neutrality law, it would look a great deal like this.

Who pays for Latta

Since Latta arrived in Congress in 2007, six telecom, cable and wireless PACs have given his campaign committee $438,500. These figures come from the Federal Election Commission's own contribution records for Latta for Congress:

This is not a new observation. Back in 2014, two days after Latta introduced the first of those bills, TechCrunch reported research by MapLight finding that Latta had taken $51,000 in 2012–2013 from the cable and satellite sector — companies like AT&T, Comcast and Verizon — nearly five times the $11,651 average received from that sector by members of the House.

TechCrunch also lined up his arguments against the industry's. Latta warned that regulating broadband under Title II would bring "80 years of regulatory baggage" and that his bill would provide "certainty" for investment. The cable trade association warned the same reclassification would cause "chronic under-investment." Comcast called it "enormously disruptive."

Same week. Same words. Same position.

The trade groups that won the case are the trade groups that fund him

Here is the part that closes the loop.

The lawsuit that killed net neutrality in January 2025 was brought by the broadband industry. Broadband Breakfast reported that the petitioners included USTelecom, NCTA, CTIA, and state internet-provider groups from Ohio, Florida, Missouri and Texas.

NCTA has given Latta $93,000. CTIA has given him $41,500. They spent a decade paying a congressman to write their legal theory into statute, and when Congress wouldn't pass it, they got a court to adopt it instead. Latta's own 2024 resolution to kill the same FCC order became unnecessary — the ruling did it first.

Judge Richard Griffin wrote for the panel that the FCC "misreads the text of the Communications Act as it applies to Broadband Internet Service Providers." That is, almost word for word, the position Latta had been introducing as legislation since 2013.

What this means at your kitchen table

The usual answer to "my internet provider is treating me badly" is "switch providers." In much of Ohio's 5th District — Findlay, Tiffin, Napoleon, Defiance, Van Wert, and the farmland between them — that isn't advice you can act on. Latta himself is one of six co-chairs of the Congressional Rural Broadband Caucus, a group that exists precisely because rural America keeps running out of options.

That is exactly the situation net neutrality rules were written for. When there's no competition to discipline a provider, the only check on what it does to your connection is a regulator with authority. Latta spent a decade trying to remove that authority, and the companies that profit from its absence funded the effort.

It's the same play we've documented elsewhere. In Arkansas, a former bank CEO who chairs the House banking committee personally wrote the resolution that killed a rule capping overdraft fees at $5 — and the bank lobby thanked him by name. The industry, the committee, the donor list, and the bill are the same four things every time.

Who is not paying for Latta

His own constituents, mostly. Only about 5% of Latta's money comes from small grassroots donors, and he ranks #332 out of 440 House members on grassroots funding, according to Who Bought My Rep. Roughly 61% of his money comes from PACs.

When 5% of the money comes from voters and $438,500 comes from the companies your subcommittee oversees, it stops being a puzzle whose calls get returned.

Source

"House Republican efforts to curb FCC authority mirror cable industry lobbying" by Kyle Russell, TechCrunch, May 30, 2014. Contribution totals compiled from Federal Election Commission Schedule A filings for Latta for Congress (committee C00438697). Bill text and sponsorship from congress.gov. Photo: official congressional portrait.