WASHINGTON, Oct. 11, 2024 – Broadband trade associations and consumer groups are usually on opposite sides of court battles, but they can agree on one thing: they don’t want the Universal Service Fund to go away.

A coalition of public interest and broadband industry groups asked the Supreme Court Friday to toss out a Fifth Circuit decision from July that found the roughly $8-billion-per-year broadband subsidy unconstitutional. The Federal Communications Commission, which handles the fund, separately asked the court to step in on Sept. 30.

“Absent this Court’s intervention now, the Fifth Circuit’s decision would have immense practical implications,” the groups wrote in a petition. “The Fund has supported subsidies on which millions of Americans and thousands of service providers rely.”

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