47 U.S.C. § 258
Section 258 · Illegal changes in subscriber carrier selections
Amended 2 times on record
Applied in 20 court decisions — leading case Clark v. Time Warner Cable (2008)
Most recently applied in Commc'ns Network Int'l, Ltd. v. Mullineaux (May 2018)
How often courts cite this section
Court decisions citing this, by year.Markers show enactment, consequential amendments, and circuit splits over this section — watch for a citation surge after a change or a disagreement. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
No telecommunications carrier shall submit or execute a change in a subscriber's selection of a provider of telephone exchange service or telephone toll service except in accordance with such verification procedures as the Commission shall prescribe. Nothing in this section shall preclude any State commission from enforcing such procedures with respect to intrastate services.
Any telecommunications carrier that violates the verification procedures described in subsection (a) of this section and that collects charges for telephone exchange service or telephone toll service from a subscriber shall be liable to the carrier previously selected by the subscriber in an amount equal to all charges paid by such subscriber after such violation, in accordance with such procedures as the Commission may prescribe. The remedies provided by this subsection are in addition to any other remedies available by law.