Senate Passes Congressional Review Act Measure to Overturn E-Rate Hotspot Rule

U.S. Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Cruz (R-Texas) celebrated the Senate passage of his resolution of disapproval under the Congressional Review Act (CRA), which would repeal a Federal Communications Commission (FCC) rule expanding local control to schools and libraries, allowing them to use E-Rate funds to loan Wi-Fi hotspots to community members. In the Senate Commerce Committee's release, Chairman Cruz said that the rule was "bankrolling kids’ unsupervised internet access, undermining parental rights, and threatening to raise taxes on American families." The "Biden Hotspot Rule unlawfully expanded the Universal Service Fund (USF) to subsidize schoolchildren’s off-campus use of Wi-Fi hotspots, despite the Communications Act clearly limiting E-Rate funds to classrooms," said Cruz. "Additionally, the rule did not require schools to obtain parental consent before distributing federally-subsidized hotspots or establish meaningful filtering requirements, inviting exposure to inappropriate content and impeding parents’ ability to control the content their kids can access online."