“In short, the FCC has decided to put all remaining consumer protection eggs in one basket, but cannot be troubled to wait until the Ninth Circuit affirms that this approach is actually consistent with the FTC’s own jurisdictional statute,” they wrote.

An FCC spokesperson said, “This is just evidence that supporters of heavy-handed Internet regulations are becoming more desperate by the day as their effort to defeat Chairman Pai’s plan to restore Internet freedom has stalled. The vote will proceed as scheduled on December 14.”

The letter was signed by representatives from Public Knowledge, the Consumer Federation of America, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the National Hispanic Media Coalition, among others.

Harold Feld, senior vice president of Public Knowledge, said there is no urgency for the FCC to vote at its next meeting. “You don’t want to pull the trigger on this until you wait to see what the court actually says,” he said.

Pai argues that the current rules have stifled investment and innovation. He is also calling for the FCC to roll back its 2015 designation of ISPs as common carriers, akin to the classification that is given to a utility. He said the FCC is returning to the type of light regulation that governed the internet before 2015.

But in their letter, the groups say Pai’s proposal would go much further, and weaken even those protections put in place by Kevin Martin, the FCC chairman under President George W. Bush, in 2005. Those were a set of net neutrality principles, but a court eventually ruled that the agency had to establish a sounder legal footing to enforce them.