Green

BACKGROUND

I. The E-Rate Program

At the center of this case is a part of the FCC’s Universal Service program, known as the Schools and Libraries pro- gram, or E-Rate for short. Funded by a Universal Service fee placed on telecommunications providers (and generally passed along to consumers), the Universal Service program is designed to promote telecommunications access for low- income, rural, high-cost, or otherwise underserved communi- ties. See 47 U.S.C. § 254. As its official name implies, E-Rate uses its portion of Universal Service funding to finance tele- communications projects at school and libraries.

The Schools and Libraries Division (“SLD”) of the Univer- sal Service Administrative Company (“USAC”)1 is charged with distributing E-Rate’s annual budget of $2.25 billion. SLD accepts applications from schools for technology proj- ects and subsidizes those projects on a sliding scale — from 20 percent to 90 percent of a project’s cost — determined by the percentage of the school’s students that participate in the National School Lunch Program. 47 C.F.R. § 54.505. SLD is required to give funding priority to applications for the provi- sion of “telecommunications…