By Communications Daily — 10/23/25
Congressional Black Caucus Chair Yvette Clarke of New York and House Communications Subcommittee member Nanette Barragan of California are leading 33 other House Democrats in opposing FCC Chairman Brendan Carr’s proposal to supersede and suspend its 2024 incarcerated people’s communications services (IPCS) order (see 2506300068). The United Church of Christ, Benton Institute for Broadband & Society and justice reform groups also urged the FCC earlier this week to “reverse course” on Carr’s IPCS draft order (see 2510210047), which the commission is slated to vote on at its Oct. 28 meeting.
The draft “represents a dramatic and troubling departure” from the “bipartisan framework” that the FCC adopted in 2024 (see 2407180039) to implement the Martha Wright-Reed Act, said Barragan, Clarke and other Democrats in a letter released Wednesday. “Your proposal would raise per-minute rate caps for phone calls by as much as 83 percent and for video calls by as much as 64 percent, depending on facility type and size. These increases could shift hundreds of millions of dollars in additional annual costs onto the families and loved ones of incarcerated people … who are least able to bear them.”
The lawmakers also opposed the draft order’s proposal for “a new category of ‘extremely small’ jails [that] will face the highest per-minute rate caps in the country.” Those facilities “are disproportionately located in low-income and rural communities, where families are already predisposed to economic hardship.” The proposal “further compounds its harmful impact by shifting a wide array of costs onto the very families it should protect,” including allowing “jails and prisons to pass so-called ‘facility’ and ‘safety and security’ expenses directly onto the paying consumers.”
The draft’s “justification for these higher caps … relies heavily on a speculative concern that correctional facilities will discontinue service rather than comply with the 2024 rule,” the Democrats said. They criticized Carr for releasing the proposal “while much of the FCC’s staff remain furloughed due to the government shutdown, limiting the ability of stakeholders and advocates to review the proposal and meet with staff.” The lawmakers also said the National Sheriffs’ Association’s endorsement of the proposal “four days before the draft text became public [raises] additional concerns about unequal access to information during a period when public engagement is already constrained.”