> What, time didn't exist before today's decision?

Time did, and part of time is that responses don't occur before the thing they respond to.

> It was a response - just to an earlier round of the same debate

Its not even that; its a response in a parallel but tangentially related proceeding that started after the complaint on which the current Consent Decree was filed, addressed a different issue, and was never resolved because the party that filed it (Marriott) later withdrew it.

And Smart City's response in that proceeding essentially argues that the FCC can and should prohibit the conduct which Smart City admitted to in the consent decree, though it argues that the prohibition should be based on a different legal foundation than the one cited in the Marriott and now Smart City consent decrees.

(It also argues that the FCC should not prohibit a different, more targeted practice of de-authing that is actually based on more specific objective indicia of a threat to an existing network, which no FCC enforcement action as yet has targeted.)