Major U.S. firms representing internet and cable associations filed suit Wednesday to stop California from implementing a sweeping new net neutrality law that provides the strongest internet access protections in the country.

Attorneys from Kellogg, Hansen, Todd, Figel & Frederick; Molo Lamken; Lewis & Llewellyn; and Latham & Watkins filed the 31-page complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California on behalf of the American Cable Association, CTIA – The Wireless Association and other trade groups that are opposed to the state's California Internet Consumer Protection and Net Neutrality Act.

In a prepared statement, the plaintiffs said they are challenging California's law “because it threatens to negatively affect services for millions of consumers and harm new investment and economic growth. Republican and Democratic administrations, time and again, have embraced the notion that actions like this are pre-empted by federal law. We believe the courts will continue to uphold that fundamental principle.”

The new law replicates at the state level many of the anti-throttling and content-blocking rules originally included in a 2015 order by the Obama administration. Those regulations were rescinded last year by the Republican-controlled Federal Communications Commission.

“California's attempts to revive—and indeed expand—a repealed federal regulatory regime are plainly pre-empted,” the complaint says. “State measures that contravene validly adopted federal laws and policy determinations, including those contained in FCC orders, are pre-empted and have no force or effect.”

The complaint mirrors a lawsuit filed in the same court Sunday night by the U.S. Department of Justice. U.S. government lawyers contend California has no power to regulate interstate commerce. “Once again the California legislature has enacted an extreme and illegal state law attempting to frustrate federal policy,” U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a statement on Sunday.

The lawsuits are no surprise to the law's supporters, who were questioned repeatedly during the legislative process about the statute's susceptibility to a pre-emption claim.

“We've been down this road before: when Trump and Sessions sued California and claimed we lacked the power to protect immigrants,” the law's author, Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, said in an email Sunday night. “California fought Trump and Sessions on their immigration lawsuit—California won—and California will fight this lawsuit as well. I have complete confidence that Attorney General Xavier Becerra will do a great job defending this law.”

The lawsuit filed Sunday by the U.S. Department of Justice has been assigned to U.S. District Judge John Mendez, the same judge who upheld most of California's so-called sanctuary-state laws earlier this year. A hearing date on the federal government's motion for a preliminary injunction has been set for Nov. 14.

The complaint in American Cable Association v. Becerra is posted below:

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