• The Wall Street Journal, Friday, October 7, 2011 11:59 AM

Net neutrality advocates suffered another setback this week as the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit was selected to hear a legal challenge to new FCC neutrality rules. The random lottery pick followed efforts by public interest groups to get the hearing moved elsewhere, because, as The Wall Street Journal puts it, the D.C. Court "has been skeptical of the FCC's authority to enforce such rules in the past."

Specifically, "The D.C. Circuit torpedoed the (FCC's) last attempt to enforce Net neutrality regulations," writes The Journal. "They filed court challenges to the agency's rules in six different appeals courts in hopes of keeping the case out of the D.C. Circuit." Last year, the D.C. court rejected the FCC's efforts to sanction Comcast for violating net neutrality rules by deliberately slowing some subscribers downloads in 2008, saying the agency overstepped its authority.

"That decision," as WJ notes, "prompted the agency to pass new rules in January to give itself more explicit authority over broadband providers." Said an FCC spokesman on Thursday: "The FCC stands ready to defend its open Internet order in any court of appeals."

Read the whole story at The Wall Street Journal »