By: Desirae N. Satterlee*
Abstract
The Federal Communication Commission’s Universal Service Fund (USF) supports access to communications and telecommunications services for rural and low-income areas, schools, libraries, and rural health care facilities. In 2023, the organizations Consumers’ Research and Cause Based Commerce petitioned the Fifth, Sixth, and Eleventh Circuit Courts to review the constitutionality of the USF’s administration. Each circuit court found the USF constitutional. On a rehearing in 2024, the Fifth Circuit en banc found the USF’s administration under a “double-layered” delegation scheme unconstitutional.
The Supreme Court reversed this decision, finally upholding the USF’s administration as constitutional. This Comment analyzes the Supreme Court’s decision through the lens of the public and private nondelegation doctrines, giving special consideration to the Court’s comments on separation of powers and the applicability of intelligible principles.
This Comment then analyzes the historical and current state of executive agency independence from presidential influence through the lens of for-cause removal protections. This Comment analyzes Supreme Court case law and recent Executive Order 14215 concerning agency independence and the constitutionality of for-cause removal protections in consideration of the separation of powers doctrine. This Comment then argues that current case law and the executive order misinterpret the meaning of democratic accountability of executive agencies. This Comment then suggests Congress should codify the private, non-profit administrator structure to preserve democratic accountability in the USF.
* J.D. Candidate, The Pennsylvania State University Dickinson School of Law, 2026. The author would like to thank the family members, friends, editors, and professor who read this Comment when it was an unrecognizable first, second, and third draft. The author would also like to dedicate this Comment to her late grandfather Thomas A. Baum, who was never too busy for another legal question for a retired police officer.