 Great. Thank you. Welcome back. I'm Tim Brighlin, the chair of the House Energy and Technology Committee. It is Wednesday, March 23rd. And this is our 1030 hearing, and we are going to, excuse me, turn our attention to a topic that this committee worked on intensively back in, I think it was 2018 prior to my time on the committee. And there's a few members of the committee who are veterans of that discussion. This is around net neutrality. And in 2018, this committee and the legislature passed a bill around net neutrality and were then subsequently sued by a number of interested parties, I'll say. And that lawsuit has gone on for a number of years. And there's been some resolution on some of those issues, maybe not full resolution, but we're headed towards resolution on some of those issues nationally as other states have passed laws with regard to net neutrality and those have wound their way through the court system. We are joined today by Maria Royal, our legislative council on these issues. It's great to see you in person, Maria. Thanks for joining us. And also by Josh Diamond, who's the deputy attorney general in the attorney general's office. And that office has been defending Vermont with regard to that lawsuit. And we're going to hear from Josh in a few minutes as well on some update on the work of his office. Maria, I'm really pleased that you can be with us this morning to kind of first and foremost give us, I guess, a refresher. It's been four years since the legislature passed a law on this. And if you can refresh us on what that law does, why this lawsuit ensued and kind of where things stand today in this regard would be really helpful. So thanks for being here. Great. I'm happy to be back. I haven't been back in this committee since last session. So I was trying not to take it personally. I've been invited back. I thought things ended well, but maybe not. It did end well. So yes. And thanks for picking such an easy, simple subject to turn on. So your introductory comments actually summed up very nicely what I'm planning to talk about and also kind of the status of things and some of the issues for you to think about going forward. So yes, in 2018, Vermont, along with a number of other states introduced and passed legislation on net neutrality, California being one of the other states, and we'll talk about that momentarily, but kind of the broader background on net neutrality. And please, I never know exactly how much into the weeds to get on some of these subjects. And I don't want to get too bogged down, but just sort of big picture because I think what you will quickly realize is an area that's in an extreme state of flux, a lot of legal uncertainty. So I wanted to just kind of give some background, talk about where things are at the federal level and now more importantly, where things are at the state level. Ray, I apologize for interrupting and maybe you're about to go here, but taking us back to 2018 and why we felt a need to adopt that law, I think it's kind of critical understanding how we got. Absolutely. So at the federal level, there has been an ongoing policy debate as to whether or not broadband internet access service should be regulated like a utility, not necessarily as stringently as other utilities like electric companies, but whether the FCC should have authority to impose requirements on how that service is offered, or whether there should be more of a non regulatory approach, kind of the light touch approach. So that's been different administrations typically have very different policy viewpoints on what's best for deploying broadband and achieving greater access throughout the country. So in 2015, that's when the FCC adopted its original net neutrality rules. Of course, they weren't called net neutrality rules. That's just the term of art that's been used. That was the 2015 open internet order. And so it blocked it banned behavior such as blocking behaviors of the internet service provider. So you can't block a consumer's access to certain content. You can't throttle slow down access to certain websites for commercial purposes, right? Or favor your own businesses or the businesses of your affiliates. So this was all geared around fair competition and that people have access to the internet in an unfettered way. And the other kind of role, bright line role was the ban on paid prioritization. So some content providers couldn't pay and have a faster lane because that might make it harder for other smaller companies that want to offer services as well. So all of it was designed to ensure that there aren't anti-competitive practices going on. And there are some other related issues as well. So with the change in administration under President, then President Trump and the new chair, Ajit Pai, those rules were essentially rollback or repealed. And the way that that was done is they reclassified what broadband service is under the Communications Act. That's been kind of at the heart of this. How do you classify broadband? And so you'll recall there are basically two categories. There's an information service and there's a telecommunication service. And if it's an information service under Title I of the Communications Act, the FCC does not have authority to impose net neutrality rules or any kind of what are called common carrier rules. So their authority is very limited if it's considered an information service. If it's a telecommunication service, then technically you could regulate like you traditionally regulate telephone companies. There's much broader authority. So that's how the FCC has been giving itself more authority by reclassifying it or saying that it's a telecommunication service or defining it as an information service and saying we're not going to regulate and we don't really even have the authority. This is something that should be dealt with by the Federal Trade Commission or the Department of Justice under their authority. So that was in 2017 that that Restoring Internet Freedom Order was adopted. And in 2018 is when many states then responded and they said well if the FCC is not going to act or impose these protection, consumer protections, many states felt that there should be some regulation in this area. So Vermont actually considered a number of proposals at that time. There was a bill, I think it was H360, I'm not sure, I have to go back and look. House bill that was very similar to what California has done basically took all of the FCC rules and applied them in Vermont. It also had other proposals saying that if you want to get a 248A permit, if you want to receive a federal estate grant for broadband, a whole number of other things you would have to comply with net neutrality rules. Yeah, I'm doing it. Okay. Yeah, I would just, as you're describing this, I would actually like to say because you were the drafter of that. I mean at one point the ACLU had looked and said Vermont has the strongest bill being, you know, considered right now on net neutrality. We had some places that we went after that but we were actually, anyway. Yes. Well, unfortunately Marie has a terrible memory. So Marie has to go back and reread everything. But yeah, so there was, at least in the house, or at least in energy and technology, there was broad consideration of a number of proposals. Ultimately, I don't think that bill was voted out of committee. The Senate took S-289, which was a bill that originally had to do with privacy protections, Internet Privacy, and then did a strike all amendment and made it all about net neutrality. Specifically, the Senate and the whole body chose to just proceed in a more narrow direction and apply net neutrality requirements for any provider that wants a government contract for Internet service. So if a provider is contracting with a state entity to provide Internet service as part of that contract, to get that contract, it would have to certify that it would comply with net neutrality requirements, similar requirements to the original FCC. So a very narrow approach ultimately passed. And was that just for the state contractor? Or was that for any customer connected to that carrier, if that carrier created? Any customer. So yes, so if the provider had to agree to, in Vermont, that it would provide net neutrality, yes, statewide if it wanted that government contract. So that was Act 169. And so a couple of things start happening. One, the state is sued. Two, with a federal level, that FCC order, the Trump Administration Restoring Internet Freedom Order, that was immediately challenged in federal court. So it began this kind of, what kind of authority does the state have, what ultimately is going to happen with the federal attempt to roll back net neutrality. So there was a lot of uncertainty. And I'm going to let Josh kind of talk about some of the negotiations around the Vermont law, because he can explain in greater detail that the Vermont law was never enforced. There was kind of a stay pending the outcome of some of the litigation. So particularly the Mozilla case, that was the case that looked at the Restoring Internet Freedom Order to determine whether the SC actually had authority to reclassify broadband as an information service, whether it followed the APA. And then significantly, as part of that order, the FCC issued what it called the preemption directive, basically preempting all state laws that related to regulation of broadband or any attempt to reimpose net neutrality or do anything that they had opted not to do. It was incredibly broad preemption. So that began going through the court system and ultimately the DC Court of Appeals have held the reclassification. And the big takeaway from that is the DC Court of Appeals said, we're going to defer to the FCC. If you want to call it an information service, you can. If you want to call it a telecommunication service, you can. What's a little bit problematic for people like me who would want some certainty, you don't have a policy agenda here, is next administration, change in policy, they can revert back. Another course might have been to say, what is the best interpretation? But the court chose not to do that. And pretty much said that the FCC has the authority to define it as it sees fit. So that's just kind of a signal that things might change now under President Biden. I will also just note that you probably are following the news as well. The FCC, there are currently four members on the FCC, two Republicans, two Democrats, the fifth member, the nomination is Gigi Sohn. She has yet to be confirmed. And I don't know that she will be confirmed. That's still in limbo. A lot of people expected under the Biden administration that there would be a revisiting of this issue and potentially a reclassification of internet once again going back to kind of the original Obama era 2015. So everyone's kind of waiting to see will Gigi Sohn be confirmed? And if she is confirmed, will the FCC take action once again on this subject? Yep. Also, one of the other Democratic members, their term expires this summer. So has the potential to go down to a two to one? Yeah. Oh, interesting. I hadn't even looked at their current term limits. So yes. So just wanted to kind of note that and also note that at the federal level, Congress at any time can of course pass a law addressing this issue. And that's something that right, no, but that that's actually interesting. Well, one of the things that I found interesting is Commissioner, then Commissioner Pi himself said that he would support a law that banned blocking and throttling and paid prioritization. I think his real concern was not so much about those prohibitions, but on the characterization of broadband as a title to utility like service kind of the fear of other regulations and authority. I think that's kind of where the real concern is not so much on the net neutrality rules. But in any event, the Mozilla court, the DC court struck down this broad preemption and pretty much put it back to the states and said that states have authority to regulate intra state broadband, which was significant because people tried to characterize broadband and it is in part an inter state service. But I think a lot of some folks thought it's it's mostly interstate states shouldn't they should be totally preempted. This is a service that under the commerce laws should be in the realm of the national government. So significant that the Mozilla court said that states have authority to regulate the services within their borders. But potentially, but we're going to have to review them or they should be reviewed on a case by case basis to see whether or not they conflict with the communications act or with FCC policy or some other constitutional constraint at the commerce clause. So at that point, the California law, which has again the more expansive all of the net neutrality rules imposed in California was took effect and was immediately challenged. At that time, and again, Josh can speak more to the details, there was some thinking of let's see how this plays out in California before Vermont continues with its litigation. So most recently, so the industry filed a preliminary injunction seeking to enjoin the enforcement of that California law, which was heard by the district court. And in a ruling from the bench, the district court judge said, you know, in brief, that you have not shown that you're likely to succeed on the merits at this stage. And so denied the injunction that immediately was repealed to the ninth circuit. And the ninth circuit just this year issued an opinion affirming that denial of the injunction. So a couple things to note about that and looked at whether this broad California law conflicted with federal policy or the communications act at a preliminary level, right? Because hasn't the evidence hasn't been taken. There isn't a lot to go from it was just a matter of based on the legal issues at stake, had they made a strong case that they were likely to prevail and the ninth circuit said you have not met that burden. And now it's back, the litigation will continue, the evidence will be collected. So that's kind of where things are in brief at the federal level and at the state level and Vermont can. So like I said, there was a second stay of Vermont's litigation pending the outcome of the California preliminary injunction. And I'll let Josh kind of kind of update more on where things stand. So yeah, so Maria, and I don't I think this is a question for you maybe for Josh as well. But you know, in terms of I was here, I think representing the end touch goes here when we did net neutrality, you know, and we heard over and over again, you know, you, you can't do this from the providers, you can't, you can't regulate us. We can't have a patchwork of, you know, different laws across the country. So you just simply can't like why are you bothering to do this? You can't. And so what I'm hearing you say is with, well, I don't know if I'm hearing you say what I want clarity on is where we stand right now as a body. When we think about regulating internet service providers, both fixed and wireless, you know, what would you say to us as you know, when we're thinking about potentially regulating them beyond, say, Act 248. What does the current landscape say? What would your advice be to us? Well, so certainly the Mozilla opinion opened that door, right? Because they could have simply either have held the preemption directive or said that this is largely an interstate service and the states can't really regulate. So the door has been opened. Why? So and that's some guidance, right? But it's not entirely clear because they said you have to review this on a case by case basis. And the reason is because it's, first of all, depends what the state is doing, right? If it's a narrow approach like Vermont or if it's something broad like California, states have different, they're tackling this issue in different ways. But also, the market is different in different states. The choice of providers is going to be different in different states. So the need or the level of competition is going to be different. So all of those facts will have a bearing on what kind of authority the state has to protect its consumers under its traditional police powers, right? So I would say based on the Ninth Circuit, looking at the conflict preemption issues, implied preemption, whether whether the state action, like so they looked at the expanse of language in California and said, if California does this, is this conflicting with the policy of non-regulation? And they basically said, they haven't shown that yet, but it's going to go to trial and there will be evidence presented. Then, you know, they looked at it, would it be impossible for a provider to comply with the California law? And simultaneously, you know, is it to put the provider in this odd position because in other states, they're not being required to follow net neutrality or there's this non-regulation theory, like what basically the court rejected all of those theories of preemption. So the, you know, I think that it's not entirely clear because things that you that are relevant that you will look at, what is the state of the market? What is the burden on the providers? How technologically feasible is it for the provider to comply with Vermont's laws and not in other, not other states if they don't enact similar requirements? What are the costs and what are the benefits? What are and what way, what's Vermont's goal? You know, what are you trying to achieve? So all of those kind of policy decisions that to the extent that you are very clear and narrowly tailor your law, which could be a broad law, but I'm just saying to the extent that you identify that, you'll make a stronger case for why it might be needed in Vermont. So I just mean, I look across the landscape and see that, you know, there's just so much activity towards keeping that kind of status quo of no regulation, including, you know, preventing active work to prevent that fifth FCC person from being seated, you know, and we've got this kind of environment that we can't protect consumers. And so, you know, I feel like that's changing with the court decisions, even despite the FCC potentially not being seated. Right. And from the provider's perspective, too, if they see that things are kind of changing and states might be more active and there's some authority there, then it might, they might take more of a stronger initiative to have Congress do something at the federal level so that there's this national uniformity and they don't have to, you know, so things are constantly shifting in response to court decisions and FCC actions. I don't even know if this is a question or a comment, but we know where this has come up in the last two years, maybe it was a year ago, particularly regionally, is questions around data caps, where there have been certain companies that have looked to impose, you know, I guess one way to characterize it, discriminatory pricing. But, you know, in terms of how different consumers, you know, would be priced in terms of, you know, how much literally from a value metric standpoint, how much they could download and what, you know, what the pricing of that would be. And, you know, the question of, is that a, you know, is that a form of not neutrality in terms of how customers can access certain types of data that might be preferred from a certain provider relative to other types of data. And there's, there was a lot of pushback, I know, from constituents in Vermont who contacted their legislators about that, and I know that was a big issue in Massachusetts. So, you know, that's another thing that is kind of bubbled to the surface as to how, you know, how this issue might play out. And so. Yeah, yes. And I'm actually glad you brought that up because I think one thing to keep in mind with respect to the, you know, kind of the bans and the regulation is that so providers are allowed to engage in reasonable network management practices. So if they need to limit data because they're, you know, they're too many, they don't have to band with, right? So there's, there are reasonable network management, all of the, all of the rules had, you know, a waiver that said this, but in terms of a commercial decision to prefer some provider or some content over others, that is problematic. It's particularly problematic in an industry that has so consolidated in the sense that you have the owner of the network, the transmission also an owner of an affiliate that provides content and you, of course, want to favor your content. And so that is extremely problematic. And that the term for in terms of the data cap is zero, it's called zero, sometimes it's referred to as zero rating. So you might have a data cap as a consumer and a lot of consumers might have the same data cap. And that might be a reasonable ban, you know, management practice, but if you're going to exclude your content from that data cap and save unlimited access to this particular content, you know, then you're giving a competitive advantage to a particular and that contravenes basic notion of open and open internet. So that practices is frowned upon. And I think I have to look at the California law. I think that that I don't know if they specifically mentioned zero rating in the paid prioritization section or if it's going to be interpreted as banning. So I'll have to look at that. I think that was a question about whether the net neutrality rules covered zero rating. And I think a lot of people thought that it did. That was exactly the kind of anti competitive conduct that they were trying to deter. Great. Thank you for that background. That was really helpful for me just to kind of bring me up to 2022 on this. So great. Josh, you want to join us and thank you for being here in person. And you know, one of the things I'm hopeful you can kind of bring us up to speed on is just again the path of this lawsuit in the last four years and you know, where things stand right now and and also just kind of what the road ahead look like in terms of enforcement of this of this law. So thanks for being here. Yeah, it's a treat to see everyone here in person. Chair Bruggeman members of the committee, Joshua Diamond, Deputy Attorney General. So as Legh Council kind of set the stage and thank you. There was litigation brought within months of Act 169 being passed brought by American Cable Association and other trade associations whose members are internet service providers. And they raised two legal claims. One was that based upon the 2017 Storing Internet Freedom Order that the states were expressly preempted from legislating or regulating in this space. They also brought a second claim, which hasn't I think really received a lot of attention through the courts today, which is a dormant Commerce Clause defense as well. So when the case got underway and there were I think a motion to dismiss was filed by the state of Vermont. What we realized was that we did not have a place in our case to challenge the underlying order that was creating this express preemption because it's something called the Hobbs Act, which requires you to challenge federal regulations, at least with the FCC in the circuit courts of appeals. And we had done that already in the DC circuit with about 21 other states and there were some other private parties as well called Mozilla, the Mozilla case versus the FCC and thought it would be prudent that that would have bearing on our litigation here in Vermont. And so we in consultation with legislative leadership, the governor's office and a recognition that thankfully we were not receiving consumer complaints that we were aware of that industry was engaged in anti net neutrality concepts, the throttling the blocking the paid preference. And therefore, to diminish our exposure, we agreed to stay the litigation here in Vermont, but also to stipulate that we would not enforce violations of Act 169 during the pendency of the Mozilla case. So the Mozilla case ruling, I believe came out, I want to say 2020 early 2020. And we needed to wait to see whether that was going to get appealed to the Supreme Court and then a final decision was rendered in July of 2020. That was non-appealable. And as you heard from Ledge Council, the the upshot of that decision was we're going to leave the order in place, except as it applies to the preemption principles, because if the FCC, the court rationalized a reason that if you don't have the authority to regulate, you can't then impose a regulatory a regulatory construct on the states, but that's that's inconsistent. Now that's in the DC circuit. We're here in the second circuit that includes New York. And meanwhile, there's a case now starting up, as you just heard previously, in California, that deals with their law regulating net neutrality. And the feeling was again in consultation with legislative leadership, the governor's office and a recognition that we weren't getting consumer complaints about industry engaged in practices that would be inconsistent with net neutrality principles, that again, it would be prudent to continue the state of our litigation pending the outcome of the ninth circuit litigation. And that litigation, as we know today, is about a preliminary injunction. It's not the full merits. And that decision was rendered, I believe in late February of this year, essentially upholding the or denying the preliminary injunction, saying that there was not a likelihood of success on the merits, because the preemption issue that industry was hanging their hat on for purposes of the preliminary injunction, that that express preemption wasn't there. They went along with a Mozilla nationalization. Technically, we don't have a final order on that appeal, because there's now a motion for what's called an on bonk hearing. So in the kind of the arcane practice of appellate practice before the federal circuits, you have panels, let's say you've got 12 judges, you usually get a panel of three. And if the panel gives you an adverse decision, you have one of two options. You can ask the appellate court to seat the entire court to hear all the judges, that's on bonk, or you go to the Supreme Court and ask to be heard. And pending before the ninth circuit is this request to have the entire panel to hear the decision or to review the decision from that panel. But in our stipulation, we had a time bound, we didn't want it to be open-ended forever. So the way that the stipulation of the stay reads and was incorporated into an order here in our courts was that either we get a final decision from the ninth circuit on the PI motion, the preliminary injunction motion, or April 15, 2022. So that this wasn't completely open-ended. And in light of what has happened in the DC circuit and what has happened in the ninth circuit, we think that there's enough to say, okay, let's go forward and start enforcing the law and making the law operational. Now I'm going to put a big asterisk there because there's now some activity going on here in the second circuit that could have direct bearing on us. So from our perspective, come April 15, Vermont will be able to fully enact Act 169 going forward. But there is still litigation that can impact us. In the second circuit, New York passed not on necessarily net neutrality, but tried to regulate internet service providers by requiring a lower tariff, if you will, or monthly fee for low-income folks. And the industry challenged that on the same basis, saying the 2017 order preempts you from regulating like a telecom or an electric utility. And the trial court heard a motion for preliminary injunction and ruled in favor of industry on that and said that the DC circuit got it wrong on the preemption analysis. And currently that is being appealed to the second circuit court of appeals, which would have direct, the outcome of that case could have direct bearing on our trial court litigation here in Vermont. So if I just may finish the thought and then take the question, if that's okay. So in talking with plaintiff's counsel, we have agreed to stay the litigation here in Vermont, not the implementation of the law, just the litigation, and wait to see what the second circuit does. Because hopefully they'll fall in line with the ninth circuit as well as the DC circuit. But our trial courts have to hear and let follow the law as interpreted by the second circuit, at least in the federal court system. And that's why we thought it would be proven. It's kind of getting our cake and eating it too. We hedge our risk against attorneys fees, but we can go forward and start fully implementing the law. Thanks, Josh. My question is around the second with the activity in the second circuit, which I have not been following. Can you just say a little bit more about that? So the law that is being challenged requires providers to provide a lower income rate. Yes. So it's the requirement of to provide a lower income rate that is the is the the underlying practice. So it's not analogous in that sense to our law, but the legal principle that's being challenged would have direct bearing whether or not the state of New York is preempted under the 2017 order from taking that type of action. And obviously, we're not going to resolve that legal issue here. But those seem there seems to be a fork in the road there in terms of kind of preemptive issues that are being addressed. And I don't understand well enough kind of the legal construct as to how you would differentiate kind of regulating an industry in terms of pricing relative to regulating an industry in terms of again, is this a communications, you know, slash telecommunications service and what kind of constraint can a state relative to the federal government place on that service that those seem to be two, you know, two different kind of regulatory tasks. And I'm not sure if what the courts going to try and untangle is are those two different things. And we can look at one from a federal preemption issue, but maybe segment the other as not subject to kind of those preemptive issues. I don't I don't know. But is that essentially what is going to what is going to be rolled with that? Well, I'm not sure it's going to get into the ladder issue of distinguishing between the two. It might. But I think it's a more fundamental legal question. So the case that's before the Second Circuit is also on this kind of narrow procedural posture, which is granting a preliminary injunction. Is it reasonably is a reasonable likelihood of success on the merits? And what the trial court said was that this effort of regulation by New York is preempted by the 2017 order, which basically says states can't regulate ISPs. You're you're expressly preempted. They also got into what's called field preemption as well. So the question of preemption is before the Second Circuit. And they will rule, make a legal ruling as to, I think, the fundamental question that Mozilla addressed, which was, could the FCC expressly preempt states from regulating in this space when you've classified this as information as opposed to telecommunications? It could devolve into other reasoning, but I think that is the more fundamental question that we're trying to to get answered. Second Circuit. So is the is a litigation that we're talking about strictly with Vermont and the parties that are challenging it? Or is it are there other states involved? In our case, it's just Vermont. Just Vermont. Okay. Kind of coming back to to where to the chair's comments and just to see, wanted to make sure I actually have this right in my head. I mean, in the two different situations, so in the District 9 and District 2. So the net neutrality is really about whether or not we can interfere in ISPs regulation of prioritization and within their network. And this is around pricing of their product. But right. Still under the umbrella of regulating. Period. Right. Yeah. Both of them are, we've both in both cases actions have been taken by states to regulate Internet service providers. And so the one that we're involved in is around prioritization and whether or not for instance, you know, you should be able to shut down all new sources except for one that is free and all others cost a lot more to receive, for instance. And the low income is in District 2. Okay. And whether or not you can require providers to provide a low income service. And so I guess right. And so we go back to the classification because, you know, what is this? Is this a luxury item? Is this not a daily necessity? Is this something that is required for modern life, which certainly is what I would say. And in which case that classification really doesn't change. So that's something if it's required for daily life. Sorry. I'm just kind of talking around this, making sure that I have this right in my head. So it is a different type of regulation. It's possible that the court could go down a different path that are different legal theories. But I think the central question which has bearing on us is how the court looks at the fundamental question of express preemption, whether the 2017 order expressly preempts state's ability to regulate in this space. Right. But they seem to have already sent a pretty strong signal in that regard. Certainly the DC circuit did in the 9th circuit and hopefully the 2nd circuit will follow suit. Right. And I guess that's why I a little bit differentiate maybe from a legal perspective. It's not at all. But for the courts and maybe this was New York state's intention in kind of forcing, you know, in fact when we were working on our broadband bill last year, I think right as we were kind of getting to the conclusion of that process is when New York came out with this requirement that ISPs, their state, offer, I think it was a $15, $15, $25. And that immediately triggered the okay, you know, that gloves are off. And it was quite obvious there was going to be a lawsuit on that and there was. But that, you know, depending on where this lawsuit goes, that would open up a huge, I'll say, opportunity to regulate from a price perspective as, you know, states could go in and say and regulate not just for low income folks, but for everyone. Here's what the cost of 100 over 100 plan is going to be in the state. And we are going to set that price that, you know, that seems like a very different type of regulation than, you know, than what was being contemplated in reaction to the 2017 FCC order. But I'm going to go to have one first then learn. I'm curious in all of these cases and in arguing Vermont's case, you know, or when New York did, how much is limited in the court process to really just did this court get it right? Or did this order match the law? And how much can you make broader arguments about the necessity for this as demonstrated by COVID and the need, the public need to have full access to the internet, which is, you know, we all understand what I'm saying. In New York's case, to provide access for low income people to me is like, if I was arguing that case, I'd say we've seen how much disadvantaged lower income people are in this time because they don't all are not all able to have access. I'm just curious how much of the public policy issue can be argued in the court cases. Without getting into judicial decision making philosophy and, you know, arguing that it's always good to provide the policy context because that helps inform judges about how they decide kind of the Brandeis brief concept. I think you have to look at the legal claims. So the express preemption is, I think from where I sit, just a sheer legal claim. Do you have the authority to even act in this space, regardless of the strength of the policy argument? The second claim that's in our case is the dormant commerce clause, which is more of a balancing test. Have you excessively burdened interstate commerce and where you get into those issues where I think the fact the factual policy arguments would be more influential, but you got to get through that first legal threshold question. Do you even have the legal authority to regulate in this space? Yeah. So Josh, what happens if District 2 comes to a different conclusion than District 9? Does that automatically then set up the going to the Supreme Court? I don't want to prognosticate on what the final outcome would be in our case, but trial courts within the second circuit, which includes Vermont, are bound to follow the law of the circuit. So if there was an adverse ruling on express preemption, that would create a higher bar for us. Okay. And so just to kind of start to bring our discussion to a conclusion, where things stand right now is as of April 15th, it looks as if Vermont will have a clear path to begin to enforce its law. What I'm also hearing is that there have been few and maybe zero consumer complaints with concerns about issues under net neutrality. And what would the effect be relative to today Vermont beginning to enforce this law? Will there be an effect on ISPs or consumers? I'm not aware of consumer complaints in this realm. You know, I'm not saying I've got full visibility on that. Maybe the Department of Public Service has more, but I'm not aware of this being a pressing issue for consumers at the moment. Thank you, Josh. And thank you, Maria, for giving us an update on this. This is something I'll probably check back with you both on in the next month, just as some of these cases evolve and we get closer to April 15th. I appreciate you being here in person and taking the time with us today. Thank you. Good to see you all.