Californians: Tell Your Assemblymember to Restore Net Neutrality Protections in S.B. 822
Internet users were already at the mercy of ISPs, like AT&T, Comcast, and Verizon before the FCC repealed net neutrality protections. Now they don’t have to treat everything you access online equally. S.B. 822, as it was originally written, would have secured net neutrality for Californians. Unfortunately, amendments added by a committee at the last moment endangers net neutrality.
Californians: the Assembly can restore the protections of the original bill. Tell your representatives to bring back the strong net neutrality protections that used to be in S.B. 822.
While Congress can still, and should, act to save net neutrality on a national scale, federal protections do not exist today. In response, states should use their own leverage to try to keep the Internet free and open.
On the first day that the California legislature met in 2018, State Sen. Scott Wiener introduced a bill that would help create the most comprehensive net neutrality protections in the country: S.B. 822. State Sen. Wiener's bill was a gold standard of net neutrality legislation, and Californians deserve to see it become law. S.B. 822 passed the State Senate with very few changes.
Unfortunately, on June 20, an Assembly committee gutted the bill, leaving plenty of loopholes for ISPs to use to circumvent the principals of net neutrality. Committee Chair Miguel Santiago’s hostile amendments serve the ISPs far more than Internet users.
However, the Assembly can still amend the bill back to what it was, ensuring that California has strong net neutrality protections in place before moving it to the Governor’s office.
Voice your support for net neutrality and keep the big ISPs from controlling how and what you see on the Internet. Tell your California Assemblymember to restore net neutrality protections to S.B. 822.
We won!
Victory! Pressure on lawmakers has resulted in the protections of S.B. 822 being restored. A strong net neutrality bill is now back on track in California.
