Kristian Stout Quoted in Communications Daily on the FCC’s Onshoring NPRM
The FCC is advancing a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking intended to require regulated companies to relocate customer call center workers to the United States. ICLE Innovation Policy Director Kristian Stout spoke with Communications Daily about the legal questions surrounding the agency’s statutory authority to enact these regulations, noting that the rules face judicial challenges because directing corporate workforce location decisions resembles industrial policy rather than communications regulation. Read the full piece here.
Kristian Stout, innovation policy director at the International Center for Law & Economics, told us he agrees that any rules may not hold up in court. “There’s a meaningful distinction between regulating the quality and security of customer interactions, which the FCC can plausibly tie to its existing authority, and regulating where companies choose to locate their workforce, which looks much more like industrial policy.”