Indecency appeals – FCC now 0-2 – In a long-awaited decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit reversed the FCC’s order holding that CBS and its affiliates had broadcast indecency in the notorious 2004 Super Bowl half-time show featuring Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake. The Court found that the FCC had had a longstanding policy not to penalize the occasional fleeting instance of possible indecency and that the Commission had not adequately explained why it chose to depart from that policy when it whacked the CBS folks for the half-second exposure of La Jackson’s right breast. The Court’s decision was consistent with the Second Circuit’s decision in the Fox case, although unlike the Second Circuit, the Third Circuit did not suggest that the Commission’s indecency policy is unconstitutional.
It’s not clear where this case will go from here. The Court remanded the matter back to the FCC for further consideration – so if the FCC wants to try to take another crack at explaining its abandonment of the fleeting expletive policy, it could conceivably do so. But that policy is already before the U.S. Supreme Court in the Fox case, so it’s unlikely that the Commission will bother to try to tweak its policy before Chief Justice
Roberts and his pals get their crack at it. It would seem more likely that the Commission might try to bring the CBS case up to the Supremes, to be heard at the same time as the Second Circuit/Fox case which is already there. There is, of course, no guarantee that the Supremes would take the CBS case, but the FCC might think that the image of Ms. Jackson’s anatomy broadcast out to gazillions of football fans presents a stronger case for heavy-handed enforcement than does the situation in Fox (which, you will recall, involves ad lib remarks by Cher and Nicole Richie). Another theory is that the FCC will just sit tight and do nothing with the CBS/Jackson case until the Supremes have issued their decision in Fox, which will probably occur sometime in the first half of 2009.
Whatever happens, the Third Circuit’s decision provides further confirmation that the Commission’s indecency policy in the wake of the 2004 Super Bowl has been a dramatic, and unjustified, over-reaction.
