The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit has upheld the FCC’s 2022 rejection of LTD Broadband, Inc.’s Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) award of over $1.3 billion. After emerging as the highest winning bidder in the RDOF auction (Auction 903) for locations in 15 states, the FCC denied LTD’s long-form application and found that the company failed to satisfy the FCC’s legal, technical and financial requirements for the RDOF program. After exhausting all appeals at the agency level, LTD appealed in February 2024 with a Petition for Review at the D.C. Circuit, arguing that the FCC’s denial was arbitrary and capricious because the agency did not follow its own rules and instead subjected LTD’s RDOF application to “a deeply probing and skeptical standard of review.” The court rejected each of LTD’s arguments, holding that (1) the FCC’s RDOF rules did not limit application review to merely checking for “completeness and endorsement by experts;” (2) the FCC gave fair notice to LTD; (3) the FCC did not treat LTD differently than other similarly situated Auction 903 bidders; and (4) an across-the-board denial was reasonable (versus selectively denying LTD’s winnings).
