In 1996, the FCC adopted guidelines which only protect consumers from adverse effects occurring at levels of radiation that cause thermal effects (temperature change in tissue), while ignoring substantial evidence of profound harms from pulsed and modulated RF radiation at non-thermal levels. The FCC hasn’t reviewed its guidelines or the evidence since, despite clear scientific evidence of harm and growing rates of RF-related sickness.
In 2012, the Government Accountability Office of Congress published a report recommending the FCC reassess its guidelines. As a result, in 2013 the FCC published an inquiry to decide whether the guidelines should be reviewed. It opened docket 13-84 for the public to file comments.
Thousands of comments and scientific evidence by scientists, medical organizations and doctors, as well as hundreds of comments by people who have become sick from this radiation were filed in support of new rules. Nevertheless, on Dec. 4, 2019, the FCC closed the docket and published its decision, affirming the adequacy of its guidelines without proper assessment of the comments or the evidence.
The lawsuit, called a Petition for Review, contends that the agency’s decision is arbitrary, capricious, not evidence-based, an abuse of discretion, and in violation of the Administrative Procedures Act (APA).
CHD’s lawsuit was joined by nine individual petitioners. Petitioners include Professor David Carpenter MD, a world-renowned scientist and public health expert who is co-editor of the BioInitiative Report, the most comprehensive review of the science on RF effects; physicians who see the sickness caused by wireless radiation in their clinics; and a mother whose son died of a cell phone-related brain tumor.
CHD’s lawsuit was filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. However it was transferred to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit where it was joined with a similar lawsuit filed by the Environmental Health Trust and Consumers for Safe Cell Phones. The main brief and the reply brief were filed jointly by all petitioners.