This Georgia telephone law would’ve hurt the poor. Now a judge has blocked it.

A federal judge has blocked a controversial proposal that would've disproportionately hurt low-income Georgia residents if it had gone through. In a preliminary injunction, Judge Richard Story of the Northern District of Georgia agreed with wireless carriers that forcing poor people to pay $5 a month for phone service that residents of other states get for free would cause irreparable injury. The charge was supposed to go into effect in January 2014, but the ruling will prevent it until a final decision has been made in the case. The idea, proposed by Georgia's public service commission, was approved by a 3 to 2 vote. It affects the 28-year-old federal program known as Lifeline, which grants phone service to the poor at a special subsidy. But a back-of-the-envelope analysis of Georgia's demographics revealed that the state has many more poor people than Doug Everett, the Georgia public service commissioner who's led the charge against Lifeline, seems to think. Instead of a Lifeline penetration rate of 125 percent -- as the commissioner suggests -- it may in fact be more like a penetration rate of about 30 percent. Moreover, when pressed to describe the impact of the rate hike, Commissioner Everett admitted he had "no idea" how effective the proposal would be and admitted that people would be hurt by the rule.