Constitutional challenge to the FCC’s indecency policy is center stage in Fox’s second trip to appeals court, judges appear unsympathetic to FCC arguments
If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. And so it was that the FCC trudged back into the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit on January 13 to defend the “fleeting expletives” portion of its indecency regime one more time. When last the Commission fought this particular fight in this particular arena, things didn’t go so well for the agency. From what we saw, the Commission is not likely to fare any better this time around.
Back in 2006, in the wake of Janet Jackson’s Super Bowl flash, the Commission determined that fleeting uses of “fuck” and “shit” in two live awards shows aired by Fox in 2002 and 2003 violated the prohibition on indecent broadcasts. Fox appealed the decision to the Second Circuit, which overturned the FCC on non-constitutional grounds. According to the court, the FCC failed to explain why it had chosen to abandon a longstanding policy of not penalizing the occasional “fleeting” use of expletives. As we reported here last April, the Supreme Court, having agreed to hear the FCC’s appeal of the Second Circuit ruling, reversed the Second Circuit and shipped the case back down for further consideration.
While the FCC may have been pleased to have won a temporary reprieve from the Supremes, any Commission elation must have been tempered by the grim reality that it was about to jump out of the frying pan and into the fire.
When the Second Circuit gave the FCC the big thumbs down in 2007, its opinion was not limited to the relatively narrow non-constitutional law question on which the case was ultimately decided. Rather, the court took the somewhat unorthodox step of offering a detailed analysis of the constitutionality of the FCC’s indecency policy, an analysis which brutally ripped that policy apart. The constitutional analysis was what lawyers refer to as “dicta” – meaning that it technically wasn’t an essential aspect of the court’s holding, and so had no precedential impact. Still, that analysis clearly telegraphed what the Second Circuit thought of the FCC’s policy, constitutionally speaking.
So when the Supremes sent the case back to the Second Circuit (the logical expectation being that the parties would re-address the constitutional issue), the likely outcome of that second visit to the Second Circuit was anticipated to be a foregone conclusion.
And after the January 13 oral argument, it’s looking like that foregone conclusion is a pretty good bet: many observers expect that the Second Circuit will hold the “fleeting expletives” to be unconstitutional. (You don’t have to trust us on this one — the oral argument is available on-line for your viewing enjoyment.)
The issue most troubling to the Second Circuit this time around appeared to be the FCC’s failure to provide a coherent and specific standard as to when something was indecent. One judge characterized the Commission’s indecency decisions since the Supreme Court’s 1978 Pacifica decision as a matter of “bewildering vagueness”. The Second Circuit panel peppered FCC counsel with hypothetical programs they worried might be found indecent under the current regime. For instance, Judge Leval (the source of the “bewildering vagueness” characterization) asked whether a production of Hamlet might be found indecent, and Judge Hall queried whether a news report on Wednesday’s oral arguments would be allowed to include the original uncensored clips from the 2002 and 2003 broadcasts.
The FCC’s counsel suggested in response that both of those examples would probably not be found held indecent, noting that the Commission “bends over backwards” to protect news programs and editorial decisions. The Court, reflecting apparent skepticism, asked pointedly whether the First Amendment allows it to rely on an agency’s promise to “bend over backwards.”
Counsel for Fox (and NBC and CBS, who participated as intervenors), as well as the judges, also expressed some concern over the impact of the FCC’s enforcement policy on smaller local broadcasters. The limited resources of small broadcasters, the argument went, might prevent them from implementing a delay system – and, without that safety net, the threat of enhanced penalties could lead them to self-censor their broadcasts, and particularly their news coverage. The court seemed unconvinced (as Justice Scalia seemed to suggest in his opinion) that this concern might be alleviated because folks living in smaller towns were less likely (at least according to Scalia) than “foul-mouthed glitteratae from Hollywood” to use such expletives.
The Court and FCC counsel also parted ways on whether the Supreme Court’s decision in Pacifica governs the current case. The FCC clung to that decision, claiming that Pacifica’s approval of indecency regulation, combined with the FCC’s (supposed) guidance since then about what is and is not indecent, foreclosed the argument that the current regime was unconstitutionally vague. The Second Circuit strongly disagreed, with Judge Leval at one point telling the FCC to “stop telling us Pacifica ruled on this – it didn’t,” and advising Commission counsel that if he didn’t think the Pacifica decision was extremely narrow, he needed to read it again. Judge Leval explained that whereas Pacifica narrowly approved of the regulation of a specific list of “seven dirty words”, it had not addressed the “great miasma” of things now regulated in the “broadness of the Commission’s menace.”
When the discussion turned to the supposed purposes of the indecency policy, things didn’t get better for the agency. The Commission claimed that the main purpose of the policy was to protect children from hearing expletives, to which Judge Hall asked in response how that purpose was served by the “exception” for news programming, questioning whether children could tell the difference in the use of expletives in different types of programming. The Court also queried FCC counsel about why use of the V-Chip was not a better, less-restrictive solution to enable parents to protect their children from broadcast expletives. Judge Leval asked whether, if technology exists that could allow parents to filter programming for their children, parents with the lowest tolerance for questionable language – those who may not let their children outside due to fear they might “hear a nasty” – should be allowed to dictate what other viewers and listeners should hear.
While the Second Circuit’s decision probably won’t be issued for a couple of months, there is little doubt that it will find the FCC’s current indecency regime, at least as it applies to “fleeting expletives”, unconstitutional. Of course, that is not likely to be the end of things. The next decision out of the Second Circuit is almost certain to be appealed to the Supreme Court, which will have the opportunity to address the constitutional issues it declined to address the last time.
Meanwhile, moving along on a parallel track is CBS’s appeal of the FCC’s decision fining it for broadcast of Janet Jackson’s infamous “wardrobe malfunction” in 2004. As we all know, the Third Circuit initially found that fine to be arbitrary and capricious, but was asked by the Supreme Court to rethink that decision in light of the remand of the Second Circuit’s original decision. Oral arguments in the Third Circuit are scheduled for February 23, which could mean a new Third Circuit decision sometime in the late spring or summer. It is possible that both Courts’ decisions could be consolidated in a single Supreme Court case, probably in the 2010-2011 term.
