Air Transport Association of America v. Public Utilities Commission of the State of California, Defendants

This case concerns a regulation promulgated by the California Public Utilities Commission. The regulation effectively prohibits telephone customers in California from surreptitiously overhearing or recording conversations without notice to the parties to the conversation. The Commission and its Commissioners (CPUC) appeal the grant of summary judgment and declaratory relief in favor of the Air Transport Association of America and 13 airlines (ATA), and the issuance of an injunction prohibiting the CPUC from causing the termination of the airlines’ telephone service or otherwise enforcing CPUC General Order 107-B (G.O. 107-B) against them.

The principal issues which we must decide in reviewing the district court’s judgment are, first, whether the district court erred in holding that the CPUC lacked jurisdiction, as a matter of state law, to issue the regulation and, second, whether the district court erred in holding that G.O. 107-B violated section 202(a) of the Federal Communications Act, 47 U.S.C. § 202 (a), on the ground that the regulation requires discontinuance of the airlines’ telephone service in an unreasonably discriminatory manner. As additional support for the result…