[JURIST] The US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit [official website] on Wednesday denied a petition for review [opinion text, PDF] of a 2004 Federal Communications Commission (FCC) order [FCC press release,PDF] preempting state regulation over Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) [FCC backgrounder] technology, such as Vonage and other Internet phone companies. Several state regulatory commissions had challenged the order as arbitrary and capricious. In the order, the FCC determined that it would be "impossible or impractical to separate intrastate components from interstate components" regarding VoIP technology, and thus excluded the technology from state regulation. Reuters has more.

In 2005, the state of Texas sued Vonage [JURIST report], alleging that the company's service did not properly route calls to 911.