234
Opinion of the Court
(1936); American Column & Lumber Co. v. United States, 257 U. S. 377 (1921), and the Court has protected regulated firms from some types of antitrust suits brought on the basis of their filed rates, see, e. g., Square D Co. v. Niagara Frontier Tariff Bureau, Inc., 476 U. S. 409 (1986). As we noted earlier this Term, there is considerable "debate in other forums about the wisdom of the filed rate doctrine," Security Services, Inc. v. Kmart Corp., 511 U. S. 431, 440 (1994), and, more broadly, about the value of continued regulation of the telecommunications industry. But our estimations, and the Commission's estimations, of desirable policy cannot alter the meaning of the federal Communications Act of 1934. For better or worse, the Act establishes a rate-regulation, filed-tariff system for common-carrier communications, and the Commission's desire "to 'increase competition' cannot provide [it] authority to alter the well-established statutory filed rate requirements," Maislin, 497 U. S., at 135. As we observed in the context of a dispute over the filed-rate doctrine more than 80 years ago, "such considerations address themselves to Congress, not to the courts," Armour Packing, 209 U. S., at 82.
We do not mean to suggest that the tariff-filing requirement is so inviolate that the Commission's existing modification authority does not reach it at all. Certainly the Commission can modify the form, contents, and location of required filings, and can defer filing or perhaps even waive it altogether in limited circumstances. But what we have here goes well beyond that. It is effectively the introduction of a whole new regime of regulation (or of free-market competition), which may well be a better regime but is not the one that Congress established.
The judgment of the Court of Appeals is
Affirmed.
Justice O'Connor took no part in the consideration or decision of these cases.
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