By Christopher Cole – 12/15/2025
Law360 (December 15, 2025, 7:22 PM EST) — The Federal Communications Commission will soon make effective a rule rolling out multilingual alert templates for cellphones during public emergencies following pressure from Democrats on Capitol Hill over alleged delays in the effort.
Amid questions about the technical feasibility of using a variety of language templates in wireless emergency alerts, the agency published a late Biden-era rule updating the alerts in the Dec. 10 Federal Register.
Democrats claimed this summer that the FCC was dragging its feet in publishing the language templates even though it had been approved by the agency in January.
“I’m pleased to see the FCC take this important first step toward ensuring that immigrants, tourists and other non-English speakers have the information they need to stay safe during emergency situations,” Rep. Nanette Diaz Barragán, D-Calif., said in a statement Monday. “Lives are on the line, and I’ll be watching closely to ensure that the FCC and mobile service providers follow through and work in good faith to implement this critical policy.”
The FCC first agreed to the multilingual alerts rule in fall 2023, but an order in January created templates for use in wireless emergency alerts.
When the templates had not been published months later, congressional Democrats decried how much time was going by without putting them into effect. Federal Register publication is a necessary formality to cement the rules into the regulatory code.
At the time, FCC officials said nothing should be construed as holding up the industry’s provision of multilingual alerts as carriers send out warnings to the public about disasters and imminent dangers.
In fact, Carr told Barragán in a July response that as designed, the templates “do not and could not work today or for years to come — as the FCC itself has conceded.”
“For another, dozens of groups representing non-English speakers have made clear that the template approach would be ‘counterproductive’ and uncomprehensible to many non-English speakers,” he said. “Plowing ahead with an approach that does not work technically today and, even if it did work, would leave people without actionable information does not serve the public interest.”
The FCC has also emphasized that nothing prevented mobile providers from sending out alerts in multiple languages, and that implying otherwise risked misleading alert originators.
This month’s Federal Register notice sets a June 2028 effective date but reiterates an agency decision that “the multilingual templates we adopt today are optional for use by alerting authorities.”
“In the event an alert originator does not find it appropriate to use the template, they are not obligated to,” the agency said.
The FCC did not immediately respond to a press inquiry Monday.