The Supreme Court punctuated its 2024 term with a decision that allowed the Federal Communications Commission to continue charging Americans billions of dollars annually for its Universal Service program.

Universal Service, a subsidy program meant to bring communications technologies to rural and low-income areas, survived a consumer group’s challenge that argued that the FCC’s seemingly limitless power to raise funds for universal service was an unlawful delegation of Congress’ taxing authority to the executive branch.  

The decision in Federal Communications Commission v. Consumers’ Research causes little surprise given the tenor of oral arguments in March, but it will cause even less celebration as Chief Justice John Roberts’ court backs away from another opportunity to restore a vital separation between the federal branches.   

If we can know a doctrine by its fruits, then the Universal Service program is a vivid illustration of what comes from the Supreme Court’s long-standing refusal to enforce the nondelegation doctrine, a constitutional limit rooted in the separation of powers that prevents Congress from giving the executive branch legislative authority.

Universal Service has nearly doubled in annual cost when adjusted for inflation, weighing in at $8.59 billion annually as of 2024. And as the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals noted in its earlier ruling, much of that increase inflating consumers’ phone bills is driven by the fraud and waste endemic to the program. 

The growing costs, whether productive or not, have long been attributed to Congress’ failure to give meaningful guidance when it deputized the FCC to pursue “universal service.” But the Supreme Court, led by

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