The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit just issued a ruling upholding most of the FCC’s 2024 phone justice decision, affirming that the decision — which the current FCC has since largely repealed — was fully in accordance with the law. The case challenging the higher rates adopted in 2025 is still pending before the same court.
“This decision shows that the FCC stood on firm ground in 2024. The lower rates adopted at that time were fully lawful, and the court rightfully dismissed challenges by states on behalf of prisons and jails. Site commissions — the payments from phone companies to sheriffs and prisons that are unwillingly paid for by families and incarcerated people — are a scourge and rightfully prohibited by the FCC,” said Cheryl A. Leanza, policy advisor to UCC Media Justice.
The decision arose out of the law suits filed after the FCC issued its sweeping reforms lower rates and protecting consumers as a result of the Martha Wright Reed Just and Reasonable Communications Act. UCC Media Justice had filed in court in support of that ruling.
Cheryl A. Leanza, said, “We are pleased the Court affirmed the FCC’s authority to prohibit site commissions. The court also rightly rejected all the arguments against the FCC’s previous, lower, 2024 rate caps put forward by states on behalf of prisons.”
Phone companies that had challenged the FCC’s 2024 ruling withdrew their lawsuits when the FCC reversed course in 2025.
The new court ruling also rejected the concerns submitted by other non-profits representing the needs of incarcerated people and their families, specifically FCC rules which permitted alternate pricing plans that might result in families paying rates over the established caps and a more effective consumer disclosure provision.
The First Circuit is currently considering challenges to the FCC’s 2025 phone justice decision, which substantially increased rates for families and incarcerated people. Briefing is underway in that case, and oral argument is expected next year.
For this reason, the court explained it will consider questions about how the FCC developed rates and how much it permitted to be included in the rates for prison and jail safety and security costs as part of that litigation.
UCC Media Justice and its allies filed its brief against the 2025 Order on September 9, 2026. UCC Media Justice is represented in this case by the Samuelson Law, Technology & Public Policy Clinic at the UC Berkeley School of Law.