// ARS TECHNICA — LINUX & OPEN SOURCE
California may gut state net neutrality law to comply with Trump admin demand
Trump admin broadband grants forbid states from enforcing net neutrality laws.
California is on the verge of accepting $1.86 billion in federal broadband grant funds, despite the Trump administration telling states they cannot enforce net neutrality rules on any Internet service provider that gets a piece of the grant money.
When the Trump administration overhauled the $42 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program last year, it ruled that states must agree not to enforce any rate regulation or net neutrality rule on ISPs that receive funding. This is particularly problematic for California, which previously won a yearslong court battle to defend its state net neutrality law.
Similar to federal net neutrality rules repealed during the first Trump administration, California’s law prohibits ISPs from blocking or throttling lawful traffic and says ISPs may not require fees from websites or online services to deliver or prioritize their traffic to Internet users. While the first Trump administration lost its attempt to preempt state net neutrality laws, the second Trump administration is trying to achieve a similar result by making federal broadband money conditional on whether states agree not to enforce net neutrality.
Trump’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) says each state participating in BEAD must exempt ISPs from net neutrality rules and price regulations in all parts of the state, not just in areas where the ISP is given funds to deploy broadband service. The exemption from state laws and rules would apply for up to 14 years.
Under BEAD, each US state and territory receives an allotment that it can distribute to ISPs in exchange for deploying broadband to unserved and underserved areas. California and Illinois are the only states that haven’t finalized their funding, according to the BEAD progress dashboard maintained by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA). Tomorrow, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) is scheduled to vote on a resolution to ratify the state’s final BEAD plan.
California could try to continue enforcing its net neutrality law even while accepting the federal funding, a strategy that would involve another long court battle over its right to regulate broadband providers. This would be difficult, as the Trump administration is requiring states that accept grant funding to commit that they won’t enforce net neutrality rules.
A CPUC spokesperson told Ars that tomorrow’s vote is a “procedural requirement” to ratify the state proposal submitted to the federal government in December 2025. But nearly 30 advocacy groups that focus on access to technology are treating the vote as a significant milestone and urged state leaders to defend California’s net neutrality law in a letter yesterday.
One of the letter signers is Paul Goodman, legal counsel for the Center for Accessible Technology. He told Ars in a phone interview that tomorrow’s CPUC vote is much more than a procedural step.
“It’s the beginning of the end,” Goodman said. Winning a court battle would become much more difficult after the state accepts the money, he said. Goodman said the CPUC should delay the vote and that California should file a lawsuit arguing that the NTIA-imposed condition is illegal.