ABC Affiliates Weigh In at Supreme Court

ABC stations asked the Supreme Court not to revisit the legal justification for the Federal Communications Commission's indecency-enforcement standards, but they said the FCC was clearly out of bounds to find that a Fox broadcast violated those standards. In their brief, the affiliates said the FCC policy both violated the Administrative Procedures Act and strayed too far from the narrow confines of the Pacifica decision. But they explicitly said the court did not need to address the underlying constitutionality of the FCC's indecency-enforcement powers. That differs from the filing of the ABC network and other networks, which called on the court to rethink the Pacifica decision, which is the underpinning of FCC indecency enforcement. They also differed from the networks in not asking the court to reconsider the entire broadcast-regulatory framework, saying it was also not necessary "to revisit Red Lion Broadcasting Co. vs. FCC, 395 U.S. 367 (1969), which affirmed the statutory public-trustee regulatory framework for the broadcast media."