Last week, a California Assemblymember who had sponsored legislation for a broadband affordability law abruptly withdrew the legislation.
But what really killed the broadband affordability bill in California? Was it opposition to the proposed legislation from within the state or pressure from the Trump administration?
The Bill Was Advancing Until…
Modeled on New York’s Affordable Broadband Act (ABA), the California Affordable Home Internet Act was first introduced in January. It aimed to require Internet service providers that operate in the Golden State to offer a $15 per month broadband service plan for income-eligible households.
The proposed legislation was introduced as AB 353 by Assemblymember Tasha Boerner and was initially supported by the California Alliance for Digital Equity (CADE).
Over the intervening months, CADE and proponents of the bill offered resources and recommendations on how the bill could be made more effective than the ABA, hoping to avoid the pitfalls that advocates were seeing with the rollout and implementation of New York’s law.
On June 4, the California bill advanced through the state Assembly and moved on to the state senate by a 52-17 margin.
Along the way, however, Boerner – who has received significant campaign contributions from the state’s telecom giants – added amendments to the bill that degraded its speed definitions to below the definition of broadband, gutted the California Public Utility Commission's (CPUC) ability to hold large telecoms accountable, and created new financial risks for municipal broadband providers.
Those amendments led CADE to not only withdraw its support, but to also actively oppose its passage.
“With recent and forthcoming amendments, AB 353 will set a dangerous ‘separate and unequal’ precedent for Internet access in California that would leave our most marginalized communities with subpar service and extremely limited consumer protections. For this reason CADE is firmly opposing the bill, alongside many other digital equity advocates,” CADE’s Lindsey Skolnik told ILSR.
CADE – a coalition of numerous California digital inclusion activists and groups (which includes ILSR) – sent a letter to lawmakers warning them that they were on the cusp of undermining an historic opportunity to expand and improve broadband access and affordability for financially-strapped Californians.
The letter noted how the “amendments resulting from closed-door negotiations with industry were accepted on the Assembly floor, which ultimately gutted the bill and abandoned the struggling California families it was meant to serve.”
Then, last week, Boerner announced the bill was no longer moving forward, effectively killing any chance that affordable broadband legislation would pass in this year’s legislative session – at a time when affordability issues are a top concern for residents.
But, in explaining why she withdrew the legislation, Boerner did not say it was because of the pushback her office was getting from digital inclusion advocates across the state
Nor was it because of industry objections for that matter.
Trump Administration to Blame?
Boerner laid it at the feet of the Trump administration. In a Facebook post, she said:
“Unfortunately, due to President Trump’s drastic new changes to the Broadband, Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) program, I have made the difficult decision to shelve my legislation … Although I fundamentally disagree about the federal government’s authority to preempt California’s rights in this space, the change has introduced too much legal uncertainty and put at risk $1.86 billion dollars in federal broadband infrastructure funding that I know the Trump administration would take joy in keeping from Californians.”
That was followed by an interview in which Boerner was more specific, telling Ars Technica:
“When we introduced the bill, there were looming changes to the BEAD program. There were hints at what would happen, but we had a call two weeks ago with NTIA that confirmed that... explicit or implicit rate regulation would disqualify a state for access.”
Taking Aim at BEAD and Affordability Measures
It’s an alarming claim.
Alarming because the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law that established the BEAD program specifically requires BEAD recipients to offer at least one "low-cost broadband service option for eligible subscribers."
Granted, GOP leaders had long criticized that part of the BEAD program. And, the Trump administration’s BEAD Restructuring Policy Notice issued last month does say it “hereby eliminates the non-statutory requirements…related to the BEAD low-cost broadband service option (LCSO).”
The new BEAD rules put out by the NTIA goes on to say that “BEAD subgrantees must still comply with the statutory provision to offer at least one LCSO, but NTIA hereby prohibits Eligible Entities [states] from explicitly or implicitly setting the LCSO rate a subgrantee must offer. To be clear, NTIA will only approve Final Proposals that include LCSOs proposed by the subgrantees themselves (emphasis added).”
But the affordability bill Boerner was advancing was not tied to BEAD so it’s not clear why passage of the California Affordable Home Internet Act would give NTIA the legal grounds to block or rescind California’s BEAD allocation.
For broadband affordability advocates already smarting from the bill being gutted and ultimately withdrawn, it would actually be better if Boerner (and her legal advisors) were simply misreading the new NTIA rules.
What would be worse for broadband affordability advocates? If, in fact, NTIA is threatening to withhold BEAD funds from any state that proposes legislation similar to the law in New York. If that is the case, it would have massive ramifications for other states that have filed similar bills, such as Massachusetts, Vermont, Maryland, and Minnesota.
What makes things even murkier is that after the New York law was challenged in court, the US Supreme Court declined – twice – to intervene with an Appellate Court decision that ruled New York’s Affordable Broadband Act was indeed constitutional.
In fact, when that case was finally laid to rest in December of 2024, it prompted a number of states (California included) to move forward with affordable broadband legislation, especially in the wake of the demise of the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP).
Unsolved Mystery
It should be noted that even after the Supreme Court declined to intervene in the New York case, effectively allowing the constitutionality of the law to stand, the big ISPs who had fought the New York law then asked the Trump administration to block other states’ efforts to enact similar legislation.
Did Boerner learn during that call with the NTIA that the Trump administration was doing the bidding for the major ISPs opposed to affordable broadband legislation?
Inquiries to NTIA were not immediately returned.
It seems the only way to get a definitive answer about what Boerner refers to as the “legal uncertainty” around the California bill and BEAD funding, is for a state to pass a New York-style broadband affordability law that prompts NTIA to withhold BEAD funds, and then to follow that up with a lawsuit to adjudicate the matter.
That prospect alone may be enough to convince states not to risk losing BEAD funding or engage in the legal fight it would take to bring clarity to the issue.
Header image of detective looking through magnifying glass courtesy of StockCake, Creative Commons license, CC0 1.0 Universal
Inline screenshot of California Assemblymember Tasha Boerner courtesy of Tasha Boerner Assemblymember website
Inline image of CADE advocacy at California statehouse courtesy of CADE
Inline image of US Commerce Department building in Washington DC courtesy of PICRYL, Creative Commons license, Public Domain Mark 1.0 Universal
