The Department of Justice urged the 9th U.S. Appeals Court...
The Department of Justice urged the 9th U.S. Appeals Court to rehear a decision that struck down the FCC’s ban on political ads running on public radio and TV stations. A panel of judges for the San Francisco-based court ruled…
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2-1 that the ban is unconstitutional and violates the First Amendment (CD April 13 p2). “The panel majority applied erroneous legal standards and misinterpreted the record to reach a result that threatens the noncommercial, educational character of public broadcasting,” the department said in its petition. The 9th Circuit’s analysis “reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of the ways in which incentives to maximize ad revenue can affect programming decisions,” it said. The case stemmed from an appeal from Minority Television Project after the commission fined it $10,000 for running ads for companies. In addressing the constitutionality of the bans on political ads, Judge Carlos Bea “devoted considerable attention to the absence of a statutory prohibition on nonprofits’ ads for goods and services,” the DOJ said: As recognized by the other judges, “this distinction, which Judge Bea used to frame his analysis, is without legal significance."