Court Throws Out FCC's Joint Sales Agreements Rule

The Third Circuit Court of Appeals has thrown out the Federal Communications Commission's decision to make some joint sales agreements attributable as ownership interests, saying the FCC "improperly" enacted the rule. The court also chastised the FCC for not completing its quadrennial review of media ownership rules and concluded the FCC had "unreasonably delayed" action on defining an "eligible entity," which is key to its promoting of minority and female ownership.

In fact, failing to complete the quadrennial review was directly related to the JSA decision. "We agree with Deregulatory Petitioners that the Commission violated § 202(h) by expanding the reach of the ownership rules without first justifying their preexisting scope through a Quadrennial Review," the court said. "We are not dealing with a Quadrennial Review that is merely flawed, but rather with one that has never been completed," wrote judge Thomas Ambro for the majority. "Before defining ownership more restrictively, as it does when it enacts an attribution rule, the Commission must at a bare minimum show that it is even in the public interest to regulate ownership in the first instance."