On Sunday, the Justice Department sued California over its new law that would guarantee net neutrality for the whole state.

This law, much like the state’s auto emissions laws, would likely cause internet service providers to have to adapt their universal standards to match California’s.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in an statement that the new law was illegal because the federal government only gave the Federal Communications Commision the power to create rules for internet service providers.

“States do not regulate interstate commerce — the federal government does,” Sessions said in a official statement released after the suit was filed on Sunday.

Xavier Becerra, the attorney general for California, said in a Tweet that “California will not allow a handful of power brokers to dictate sources for information or the speed at which websites load.”

Isn’t the Republican party the party of state’s rights? If memory serves, the Republican party has classically been the party that advocates for limiting the federal government’s power.

And yet the Justice Department filed the suit shortly after the bill was signed into law by California Gov. Jerry Brown. The federal government sure didn’t waste time trying to prevent states from asserting their own rights. Sessions and his cronies probably didn’t even wait until the ink dried.

California attempting to exercise its rights probably doesn’t fly for the party that installed a former Verizon executive as the chair of the FCC in order to destroy net neutrality.

How ironic, considering the whole point of the Grand Old Party’s opposition to the Affordable Care Act for for over 10 years was its concern about the federal government overriding “state’s rights.”

It’s obvious; the Republican party only cares about state’s rights when it doesn’t control the federal government. The second Republicans take power, they enact sweeping reforms and state’s rights go flying out the window.