Sinclair's Media Ownership Challenge Stays in Ninth Circuit

The Federal Appeals Court for the District of Columbia has rejected Sinclair Broadcasting's challenge to the Federal Communications Commission's new media ownership rules, ruling that the case should be heard by the Ninth Circuit of Appeals. The FCC voted in December to leave rules in place that allow ownership of two TV stations in a market only if at least eight independent voices remain. Sinclair, which challenged that limit in the DC Court in 2002, went back to that court after the FCC's December vote, arguing that the commission neither justified the rules nor threw them out, as the DC Court asked in its 2002 decision in the case. Sinclair asked the court to issue a write of mandamus -- essentially an order to obey the court -- telling the FCC to stop enforcing those limits. But the DC Court said Sinclair's petition belonged in the Ninth Circuit, where all of the challenges to the FCC's December vote have been referred, and that rather than relating to the DC Court's 2002 decision, the Sinclair challenge was more properly a challenge of the FCC's quadrennial regulatory review.