Blanca Telephone Company v. Federal Communications Commission, et al.

Whether Chevron and Auer required the appellate court to accord absolute deference to the Government’s conflicting jurisdictional statements, made in successive cases, regarding the exhaustion status of Blanca’s second agency reconsideration petition, and to dismiss both cases for lack of jurisdiction.

Whether, in an enforcement proceeding, Chevron and Auer deference properly support the FCC’s inference of a binding Universal Service Fund (USF) funding “framework,” and the FCC’s inference that it can create a summary “framework” adjudication compliance procedure, where statutory and regulatory deference necessarily implicate ambiguity and, therefore, lack of notice of prohibited conduct.

Whether the Debt Collection Improvement Act of 1996, or any Act: a) nullifies the Communications Act’s due process provisions in favor of a novel summary asset forfeiture procedure, adopted without notice and comment rulemaking, which ignored Blanca’s 2013 USF accounting settlement; and b) limits Blanca’s right to seek judicial review of the summary forfeiture order on exhaustion grounds where the Government: 1) reneged on its offer to provide financial relief if Blanca sought further agency review and 2) subsequently began seizing millions of dollars in forfeitures.