INDIANAPOLIS – Attorney General Curtis Hill today praised a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in favor of Indiana and eight other states in a dispute over inmate phone call rates and costs imposed upon state corrections departments and county jails that allow such calls.
Attorneys general for the nine states challenging the Federal Communications Commission’s rules successfully argued that the federal agency violated principles of federalism by attempting to supersede the individual states’ authority.
The ruling eliminated a federal intrastate rate regulation put in place by the FCC in 2015, which capped how much inmates may be charged for making phone calls. The court’s ruling stated that the FCC does not have legal authority to charge rates for inmate phone calls that take place exclusively within one state, faulting the FCC for “ignoring the terms” of the law and for “misreading” the court’s precedent.
The court also ruled the method for calculating the caps was arbitrary. The court also added that the method failed to include costs incurred by jails and prisons when allowing inmates to use the phones. The court criticized the FCC’s method by saying it “defies reasoned decision making.”
Indiana joined the following states: Arizona, Arkansas, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Nevada, Oklahoma and Wisconsin.
