IANAL but my understanding is that the FCC cannot arbitrarily change policy; there is a specific process and they have to do certain things (or more precisely, they have to be able to argue in court that they followed the process). The relevant law is the Administrative Procedures Act, which among other things requires a public comment period for changes in policies and rules (and requires that public comments be considered before the final rules are established). The purpose is to avoid the situation we are in now, where regulations change whenever political parties change, which, ironically, is one of the reasons some ISPs opposed this latest change (ISPs need to make long-term plans, which is hard if the rules might change every 4 years).
So my understanding is that the law was broken because the FCC's rules change was arbitrary, rather than motivated by facts, and because they ignored expert commentary (including from the people who created the technologies discussed in the FCC's analysis). The final rules did cite various comments, from both ISPs and independent experts (myself included), but the pattern was pretty obvious: anything that does not support the FCC's case is dismissed as "not persuasive" while supportive comments from ISPs are cited as proof that the change is necessary.
It was all for show; from the beginning the FCC basically said that they were not at all interested in comments about technical facts, only about their legal authority based on the technical analysis they presented in their proposed rule change (i.e. they can make any claims about facts to justify a change in the regulations). The commissioners already made up their minds before opening the comment period and never intended to have comments affect their decisions. Whether or not that is allowed by the law is now a matter for the courts to decide.
So my understanding is that the law was broken because the FCC's rules change was arbitrary, rather than motivated by facts, and because they ignored expert commentary (including from the people who created the technologies discussed in the FCC's analysis). The final rules did cite various comments, from both ISPs and independent experts (myself included), but the pattern was pretty obvious: anything that does not support the FCC's case is dismissed as "not persuasive" while supportive comments from ISPs are cited as proof that the change is necessary.
It was all for show; from the beginning the FCC basically said that they were not at all interested in comments about technical facts, only about their legal authority based on the technical analysis they presented in their proposed rule change (i.e. they can make any claims about facts to justify a change in the regulations). The commissioners already made up their minds before opening the comment period and never intended to have comments affect their decisions. Whether or not that is allowed by the law is now a matter for the courts to decide.