ABC is telling a federal judge that the FCC’s demand for early license renewals at its eight owned stations was built to dodge the courts. In a new filing in its First Amendment lawsuit against the agency, the network says the FCC skipped the routine tools it could have used and chose the one that would put the most pressure on Disney while “deliberately evading judicial review,” Variety reports.
The filing, made October 12, answers a supplemental brief the FCC submitted after an October 6 hearing. At that hearing, U.S. District Judge Loren AliKhan of the District of Columbia asked the agency to list the other tools it had to compel discovery in its investigation of Disney and ABC’s diversity, equity and inclusion practices, beyond ordering early renewals.
What ABC Argues
The FCC has said the early renewals are not really about the licenses, but about what it calls a discovery deficiency in the DEI probe. ABC says the agency’s own brief undercuts that. “These are not merely ‘theoretical[]’ tools… they have been used by the agency for decades,” the network wrote. “Yet the agency tried none of those less intrusive tools here, instead taking the unprecedented step of calling for early license renewal of all eight ABC-owned stations at once.”
The FCC told the court that using an administrative subpoena or a fine to force Disney and ABC to hand over documents would require the government to go to federal court to enforce it. ABC seized on that. “That Defendants openly describe judicial review as an obstacle demonstrates what Plaintiffs have been saying all along,” the filing says, calling it part of a “retaliatory strategy.”
ABC also listed options it says the FCC left out, including cease-and-desist orders, warning letters and a negotiated consent decree. In a September 17 filing, the network told the court the FCC has issued more than 600 requests in its employment investigation and that ABC has produced over 18,600 pages of documents.
How The Case Got Here
In April, the FCC’s Media Bureau ordered Disney to file license renewals for all of its ABC-owned TV stations within 30 days. Those licenses were otherwise not due for renewal until between 2028 and 2031. ABC sued the FCC and Chairman Brendan Carr on August 18, arguing the order was an attack on its free speech rights backed by the implied threat of losing the licenses.
The FCC has moved to dismiss the case and says the early review grew out of its DEI investigation, which it says Carr announced long before the statements about The View, Jimmy Kimmel and President Trump’s July address that ABC points to in its suit. The October 6 hearing ended with no ruling as Judge AliKhan weighed jurisdiction.
A ruling is expected once the court has reviewed the additional filings from both sides.
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