Here’s what will happen next with the network neutrality lawsuits

[Commentary] Now that Internet providers have formally challenged the government's network neutrality rules in court, the next stage of the battle has begun. Here's a rundown of what we can expect to happen next.

It looks like the case will probably wind up being the DC Circuit. If that sounds familiar, that's because it was the DC Circuit that heard the last challenge to the Federal Communications Commission's net neutrality rule. It was that federal court that largely struck down the rules and told the FCC to try again. From the way the trade associations are acting, it's clear they believe the DC Circuit is on their side. All of them filed in Washington, even when some could have chosen to file elsewhere. The court has twice before rejected the FCC's attempt to impose its net neutrality regulations.

Will the court throw out the rules again? Not necessarily. In fact, some proponents of the FCC's rules think putting the case before the DC Circuit could actually benefit them this time instead of the telecom and cable industries. That's because, when the court threw out the FCC's rules, it did so on a technicality. Agreeing in principle with the FCC's rationale, the court held in Verizon v. FCC that the agency had implemented its rules using the wrong part of the law. To get on the right side of the law, the court implied, the FCC could either rebrand Internet providers as "common carriers" regulable under more restrictive telecom regulations, or re-write the rules so that they imposed fewer obligations on the Internet providers, classified as an "information service." The FCC wound up taking the former path -- one that Andrew Schwartzman, a lecturer at Georgetown University, thinks the D.C. Circuit would recognize and uphold.