A federal judge in California has rejected AT&T’s attempt to temporarily halt state rules requiring the company to keep providing basic telephone service, dealing the carrier a setback in its broader campaign to exit copper infrastructure nationwide.
U.S. District Judge Linda Lopez of the Southern District of California denied AT&T’s request for a preliminary injunction on July 16, ruling from the bench during a motion hearing. The decision means California’s Carrier of Last Resort (COLR) rules — which require AT&T to offer basic telephone service to any customer who requests it within its service territory, regardless of technology — remain fully in effect while the underlying lawsuit continues.
AT&T filed the suit in May, arguing that California’s COLR requirement is preempted by federal policy actively encouraging carriers to retire legacy copper networks. To win the injunction, AT&T needed to show it was likely to succeed on the merits of that preemption argument. Judge Lopez wasn’t persuaded, at least not enough to block the state’s rules in the meantime.
The ruling also opened the door wider for opposition to AT&T’s position: the same order granted intervenor status to a group of advocates, local governments, and a telecom trade association seeking to join the case.
This is AT&T’s latest attempt to shed its COLR obligations in California after losing on other fronts. The California Public Utilities Commission rejected the company’s application to withdraw from carrier-of-last-resort status outright back in 2024, following more than 5,000 public comments and eight public forums, and legislative efforts to loosen the requirement have repeatedly stalled. Having lost at the regulator and in the statehouse, AT&T turned to the courts — and, so far, that path hasn’t produced a quick win either.
The stakes are significant: California’s COLR designation currently applies to hundreds of thousands of traditional landline customers, many in rural or disaster-prone areas where copper service is often cited as the most reliable option during power outages, wildfires, and earthquakes.
The case continues in the Southern District of California, with the COLR rules remaining enforceable in the meantime. AT&T is pursuing parallel strategies elsewhere to unwind its copper obligations, including a separate FCC preemption petition and a series of site-specific discontinuance filings for damaged copper facilities in other states — none of which are affected by this particular ruling.
