Net neutrality does still exist in a limited way, but not at the federal level. As of 2026, there are no enforceable federal rules prohibiting internet service providers from blocking, throttling, or selling paid fast lanes. What remains is a patchwork of state laws — most prominently in California and Washington — that impose those protections within their own borders. For everyone else in the country, the open-internet framework that dominated a decade of policy fights is now just an idea, not law.
How the Federal Rules Disappeared
The current void is recent. On April 25, 2024, the FCC voted 3-2 to restore net neutrality by reclassifying broadband under Title II of the Communications Act.1Federal Communications Commission. FCC Restores Net Neutrality The order was published in the Federal Register on May 22, 2024, with an effective date of July 22, 2024.2Federal Communications Commission. FCC Announces Effective Date of Net Neutrality Order
It never got off the ground. A Sixth Circuit panel stayed the order on August 1, 2024, and on January 2, 2025, the same court set it aside in full, holding that the FCC had exceeded its statutory authority.3United States Court of Appeals – Sixth Circuit. In Re MCP No. 185 – Safeguarding and Securing the Open Internet In July 2025, the FCC under Chairman Brendan Carr formally removed the rules from the agency’s regulatory framework, closing out any remaining ambiguity.
The Sixth Circuit’s ruling matters beyond the immediate order. It came after the Supreme Court’s June 2024 decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, which ended the long-standing practice of courts deferring to federal agencies’ readings of ambiguous statutes. Applying that new standard, the Sixth Circuit concluded that broadband is an “information service” under the Communications Act, not a “telecommunications service.” Without the Title II classification, the FCC does not have the legal footing to impose net neutrality obligations on internet providers. Previous FCC losses had left room for a future commission to try again. This one largely closes that door unless Congress rewrites the statute.
Where State Protections Still Apply
A 2019 court ruling established that the FCC cannot block states from writing their own net neutrality laws. That opened space for a state-by-state regime that survives today.
California’s law, SB 822, signed in 2018, is the strongest on the books.4LegiScan. Bill Text: CA SB822 – 2017-2018 Regular Session Chaptered It prohibits blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization, and it restricts certain zero-rating practices — the ones where an ISP exempts its own affiliated content from data caps while counting competing services against a customer’s limit. The law survived legal challenges from both the telecom industry and the federal government.
Washington enacted the first state net neutrality law when Governor Jay Inslee signed HB 2282 in March 2018, prohibiting ISPs from favoring or blocking websites. Oregon passed similar protections. New York, New Jersey, and Vermont took a lighter approach, requiring ISPs that contract with the state government to follow net neutrality principles as a condition of those contracts.
Because national ISPs generally do not want to run different network management policies in different states, California’s rules function as a de facto floor for large providers. That is not a legal guarantee for customers elsewhere, though. If your state has no net neutrality law and no contracting requirement, you have no state-level protection to fall back on.
What ISPs Can Now Legally Do
With the federal rules gone, the practical stakes are whether providers actually engage in the practices net neutrality was written to prevent. There is some evidence they do. Research conducted after the 2017 repeal found that major mobile carriers were throttling video traffic around the clock, applying a fixed bandwidth cap to video streams while leaving other traffic alone. The throttling did not depend on network congestion and was not limited to peak hours. It applied everywhere, all the time.
In a state without net neutrality laws, an ISP can legally:
- Slow down specific categories of traffic, such as video or gaming, regardless of whether the network is congested.
- Block or degrade access to services that compete with the provider’s own offerings.
- Charge content companies for priority delivery, creating a faster tier for those who pay and a slower one for those who don’t.
- Exempt its own streaming or affiliated services from data caps while counting rival services against a customer’s monthly allowance.
None of that is hypothetical harm; each of those practices is what the vacated rules explicitly prohibited. The transparency requirements that came with the rules — ISPs having to disclose their network management practices publicly — are also unenforceable federally.5Federal Communications Commission. Disclosure Instructions for ISPs
Where to File a Complaint
If you believe your ISP is blocking, throttling, or otherwise interfering with your service and you live in a state with a net neutrality law, you can file a complaint with your state attorney general. That is the most direct enforcement path currently available.
At the federal level, the FCC still runs a Consumer Complaint Center. You can submit a complaint under the “Internet” category and describe the issue.6FCC Consumer Help Center. Filing a Complaint Questions and Answers The agency will forward the complaint to your provider, and the provider is required to respond. What the FCC cannot do, at least not through net neutrality rules, is impose penalties for blocking or throttling itself. The rules that would have supported that kind of action no longer exist.
What Would Bring National Rules Back
After the Sixth Circuit’s ruling and the end of Chevron deference, the FCC’s ability to restore net neutrality on its own has been significantly narrowed. The realistic route to nationwide protections now runs through Congress. Bills have been introduced in past sessions but none have cleared both chambers. Until legislation passes, whether net neutrality applies to your connection depends on which state you live in.