Parent is saying that California may not have the legal authority to regulate the internet in that way, since some powers are given only to the federal government.

Whether they do or do not have the authority isn't something that can be answered by anything but speculation until it's been tested in court, and I don't think any of the ISPs had enough to gain through packet prioritization that it was worth the risk of going to court.

Funny if the benefit was that negligible when it seems like they fought for it so hard originally.

Lobbying can be extremely cheap when compared to actually fighting a court battle

The broadband industry actually fought, and lost, a court battle on this, too.

It's been tested and upheld in court. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Internet_Consumer_P...:

"Ninth Circuit ruled unanimously in January 2022 that California's net neutrality law may continue to be enforced and cannot be overridden by the FCC as, current as of the decision, Internet services were classified as information services."

There's still one more higher court that can overturn that decision - SCOTUS. They could conceivably rule that no government agency, state or federal, has the ability to enforce such regulations.

That's fair. SCOTUS is a roll of the dice lately, and there's no way of telling what crazy rulings they might back. As far as I know, though, that ruling hasn't been appealed.

That there was a hail mary appeal to the Supreme Court possible that they elected not to pursue does not negate that the issue is clearly not that the broadband ISPs didn’t see “enough to gain through packet prioritization that it was worth the risk of going to court”.

Also see emission standards.

Exactly. Even if their laws only technically apply within California, no car maker is going to build a car that cannot be legally sold in the single largest market in the US. It gets even more difficult with the internet as there are few internet providers who don't have at least some kind of connection to California and therefore fall under its jurisdiction, and ensuring you only apply prioritization to packets that don't involve California is extremely tough.

These emissions regulations don't cover just California, but most of New England, the Pacific, and the mid-Atlantic states as well. I think New York has a way to "fast track" new emissions laws from California, so that the states are kept in sync.

"California cars" were a thing in the early days when emissions were difficult to comply with. Even modern cars come with a "50-state compliant emissions" line item on the window sticker.

If California ratcheted up emissions standards too high, there's the possibility that such segregation could emerge again, particularly when it comes to trucks. There are already several trim levels of trucks that are specific to Texas, because the market there is so big. I could see a truck coming with a sticker that says, "RAM TRX can not be registered or sold in CA, WI, NY, [...] due to emissions restrictions."