Court backs Comcast, puts Maine’s à la carte cable law on hold

Enlarge / A Comcast van in Sunnyvale, California, in November 2018. (credit: Getty Images | Andrei Stanescu)

A whole slew of cable companies are notching up a victory in a lawsuit against the state of Maine that seeks to block a recent law that would require à la carte cable offerings.

Comcast spearheaded the coalition of companies, which filed the suit in September. The Maine law, the first of its kind in the nation, was invalid for two reasons, the suit argued: first, because it pre-empts federal communications law, and second, because it violates companies' First Amendment rights. Comcast was joined by more than a dozen other plaintiffs, including its own NBCUniversal subsidiary, CBS, Viacom (which had not yet completed its merger with CBS), Disney, Fox, A&A, Discovery, and Hearst.

As is common in such suits, the plaintiffs first sought an injunction that would block the state from enforcing the law while the rest of the legal process gets sorted out. District Judge Nancy Torresen granted the injunction in a ruling (PDF) issued just before Christmas.

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