Sept. 4 (UPI) — The Federal Communications Commission asked a federal court to dismiss a lawsuit from ABC claiming the commission was curbing its right to free speech.
The Walt Disney Company and its subsidiary ABC sued the FCC on Aug. 18 to block an early license renewal from the agency, claiming the Trump administration is attacking the company for content it doesn’t like.
The FCC argued in its motion that the lawsuit is premature because the agency hadn’t yet tried to remove the licenses from eight local stations that ABC owns. In April, the FCC called for an early review of the licenses, an unusual move. None of the licenses were up for renewal for several years.
The FCC claims it asked for the early review because of ABC’s response investigation into the company’s diversity, equity and inclusion hiring policies. But the review came right after President Donald Trump told ABC to fire Jimmy Kimmel after a joke about First Lady Melania Trump.
The eight stations with their licenses are in jeopardy cover New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, Houston, San Francisco, Raleigh-Durham, N.C., and Fresno, Calif. They renew their licenses every eight years and are almost never revoked. The FCC hasn’t filed an early-renewal order in decades.
“This [lawsuit] would only hobble the Commission’s efforts to investigate and resolve serious allegations that Disney has engaged in unlawful discrimination, and from otherwise ensuring that Disney’s stations are serving the public interest,” the FCC wrote in its filing. “Plaintiffs, in return, would only free themselves from the burdens of proving their case in administrative proceedings.”
“They have shown (at most) minimal and self-inflicted effects on speech, and no harms that could justify” blocking the agency’s moves, the FCC’s document said.
ABC had filed for an emergency stay of the FCC’s activity, arguing it was using the regulatory process to suppress its right to free speech.
ABC in its filing said that President Donald Trump is sending a “message to every media company in the country — that they should “tell only the stories the Administration deems favorable, or face the coercive machinery of the federal government.”
“In such a world, the press could in no way be described as free,” ABC wrote. “The FCC Chairman [Brendan Carr] has left little doubt that this is his goal.”
Judge Loren L. AliKhan scheduled a hearing for the week of Oct. 5.
