WASHINGTON -- Federal regulators no longer are pressing to cut the costs of most prison phone calls, backing away from a yearslong effort to limit charges imposed by a handful of private companies on inmates and their families.
The shift by the Federal Communications Commission comes as the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit today considers whether commissioners went too far when they capped prices for inmate calls that had reached more than $1 per minute.
To make phone calls from most federal and state prisons, inmates generally must set up accounts with a private company to hold money deposited by family members. The companies typically have a contract with the prisons, which receive a portion of the call revenue.
But a week after President Donald Trump tapped a new leader for the commission, its attorneys changed course and told the court that the commission no longer would defend one of its own key provisions that limited fees for prisoners' intrastate calls. The issue set for court today was first raised more than 15 years ago by a retired nurse in the District who could not afford to call her incarcerated grandson.
Martha Wright-Reed, who died two years ago, was paying more than $100 a month to call her grandson, who was locked up in Arizona.
The commission's shift is a small but clear sign of how the new administration is remaking policies throughout government.
Its new chairman, Ajit Pai, voted against the now-contested rate caps on prison calls as a sitting Republican commissioner. With the resignation of two Democratic commissioners in January, two of the remaining three commissioners share that position.
The majority "does not believe that the agency has the authority to cap intrastate rates," the commission's deputy general counsel, David M. Gossett, said in a letter to the court's clerk. "We are abandoning, and I am not authorized to defend at argument, the contention ... that the Commission has the authority to cap intrastate rates for inmate calling services."
"Virtually all of these calls home from jail are in-state calls," said Peter Wagner, executive director of the Prison Policy Initiative. "We are seeing the cost of these calls rise -- up to $1.50 per minute -- for a simple in-state phone call."
Wright-Reed's initial class-action lawsuit after the experience with her grandson was dismissed, and she turned to the commission for help. Her petition languished for years until it was picked up by the commission's former chairman, Mignon Clyburn, now the lone Democratic commissioner.
Law enforcement officials opposed to the rate caps say they depend on the shared funds they get under the contracts to help pay for inmate programs such as addiction counseling. The funds also have gone to pay salaries and benefits, according to court filings.
At the time of the 2015 vote, Pai called the rules "well-intentioned" and praised efforts to reduce the rates. But he said the commission had gone too far and that the rules would not survive a legal challenge.
The companies providing prison phone services quickly went to court.
The major providers -- led by Securus Technologies, Global Tel Link and CenturyLink -- and a group of state and local law enforcement officials are challenging the authority of the commission to regulate calling prices.
The Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit last year temporarily blocked some of the 2015 rules from taking effect, and, in response, the FCC reworked the caps by a 3-to-2 vote.
Local sheriffs and attorneys general from nine states told the court that the commission was pursuing "its own purposes and policies" rather than executing existing law, and was expecting courts "to abdicate their role" by going along with the cap, according to a brief from the group of law enforcement officials led by Scott Pruitt, Oklahoma's attorney general. Pruitt is Trump's nominee to lead the Environmental Protection Agency.
But supporters of the commission's limits say the phone contracts are being awarded on the basis of companies' willingness to pay the highest commissions to prison systems -- not on the basis of lowest rates or best service. In 2013, phone-service companies paid at least $460 million in commissions to correctional facilities, according to a brief filed by a coalition of advocates for inmates and their families.
A number of state prison systems, including in Mississippi, New Jersey and New York, have taken steps to reduce rates and in some cases to limit commissions.
After hearing from lawyers on both sides in January, the three judges who will hear the case today -- Cornelia Pillard, Harry Edwards and Laurence Silberman -- decided to press ahead.
Because the commission is no longer defending a key provision of its own rule, the court will provide additional time today for arguments from attorney Andrew Jay Schwartzman, who represents inmate advocates, including the D.C. Prisoners' Legal Services Project and the Human Rights Defense Center.
A Section on 02/06/2017