Licenses

Walt Disney Co.’s ABC has filed renewal applications with the Federal Communications Commission “under protest” after an order mandating a years-early review of the network’s eight television station licenses.

The criticism was part of the network’s applications for the FCC review, which were filed ahead of a deadline Thursday. In an objection to the early renewal, Disney’s New York station WABC called the FCC order “unlawful, arbitrary and unconstitutional” and said it was “legally indefensible.”

“The Commission had not demanded early renewal in over five decades,” the station wrote in its filing. “And it has never before demanded simultaneous license renewal applications from a group of stations commonly owned with a network as it has here. The order has no legitimate purpose.”

The licenses for the eight ABC-owned TV stations, including KABC in Los Angeles, were originally scheduled for renewal between 2028 and 2031.

The FCC order came shortly after ABC late-night host Jimmy Kimmel made a joke about First Lady Melania Trump looking like an “expectant widow” days before a gunman tried to breach the White House Correspondents’ Assn. gala last month that President Trump attended.

Trump has frequently threatened to have TV station licenses pulled when he is unhappy with their coverage, but the order is the first time the government has acted on his wishes, sparking anger from free speech advocates. The FCC has said the order is part of an investigation into whether Disney’s diversity and inclusion policies violate federal law and the agency’s rules against “unlawful discrimination.”

In its response, WABC said the “only plausible reason” to issue the order was to “punish the station for speech the government does not like.”

“The ultimate injury here is not to the station or its parent company. It is to the public,” WABC wrote. “When a broadcaster must weigh regulatory retaliation before making editorial decisions, the public loses access to journalism that is free from government influence.”

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said in a statement Thursday that Disney filed its applications to renew its broadcast licenses only after the company was told its previous answers were “disingenuous, deficient and improper.”

“Contrary to Disney’s claim that the FCC called in their broadcast licenses for early renewal for no reason, the record shows something very different,” Carr said. “Broadcast licensees have a unique obligation to operate in the public interest. The FCC will follow the facts and law wherever they may lead.”

FCC Commissioner Anna M. Gomez, the panel’s only Democrat who has backed Disney in its fight, cheered the Burbank media and entertainment company’s filing, saying in a post on X that she was “glad to see them expose the FCC’s actions as nothing more than naked political retribution and an unlawful assault on free speech and a free press.”

Times staff writer Meg James contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected Florida’s long-shot attempt to sue California and Washington state over the issuance of commercial driver licenses to truckers who don’t speak English and are not authorized to be in the United States.

The case stems from a crash in Florida last year that killed three people. The driver, Harjinder Singh, is accused of making an illegal U-turn that caused the accident. Singh, who is from India, was carrying a valid commercial driver’s license from California and had earlier been granted one by Washington state.

Republican-led Florida has accused the Western states, led by Democrats, of openly defying immigration laws and asked the justices to rule that states lack the authority to issue CDLs to people who are not citizens or legal permanent residents.

The Supreme Court typically hears appeals of lower-court decisions, but it sometimes takes on what are known as original lawsuits in which states sue each other in the nation’s highest court.

Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. dissented from Tuesday’s order, as they often do when the court rejects an original lawsuit, saying that the court has no choice but to hear such cases.

Separately, a federal appeals court has blocked a Trump administration proposal to impose new restrictions that would severely limit which immigrants can get commercial driver’s licenses to drive a semitrailer truck or bus.