Northwestern law experts on ABC suing the FCC

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Northwestern law experts on ABC suing the FCC

CHICAGO --- Today ABC sued the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), accusing the federal agency of infringing on its First Amendment rights after it threatened to strip ABC stations of their broadcast licenses earlier this year.

"ABC's case raises foundational issues about the government's ability to control broadcasters' programming and viewpoints - and the limits of the government's ability to threaten broadcast licensees with punishments," said James Speta, Elizabeth Froehling Horner Professor of Law at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law.

ABC is asking the federal court to stop the Trump Administration's FCC from imposing aggressive regulatory actions on the network, which they see as an unrelenting campaign to punish news organizations that criticize the president.

"Presidents and other politicians often criticize the coverage they receive in the press and on the airwaves, but this administration has pushed that criticism to unprecedented threats of regulatory action," Speta said. "This case takes on those actions."

The following professors are available to comment:

James Speta is the Elizabeth Froehling Horner Professor of Law at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law. His research interests include telecommunications and Internet policy, antitrust, administrative law and market organization. He authored among the first legal academic articles on net neutrality and has continued that research into platform markets and the metaverse.

Paul Gowder, Frederic P. Vose Professor of Law, is a renowned scholar on the 14th Amendment. His research focuses on the rule of law, democratic theory, social and racial equality, institutional and organizational governance, law and technology, and classical Athenian law and political thought.

Quote from Professor Gowder:

"There are two things that you must understand to make sense of the new conflict between the Federal Communications Commission and ABC. The first is that the FCC has long-standing authorities, and the Supreme Court has softened its usual levels of First Amendment scrutiny in the context of broadcast. But all those precedents are obsolete and truly only made sense in the pre-internet age when broadcasters were sharing extremely limited radio spectrum, and it needed to be allocated fairly. This is an opportunity for the Supreme Court eventually to overrule those obsolete and dangerous authorities.

"Second, we need to recognize that the autocratic playbook that has also featured in the Trump regime's attacks on other civil society institutions like law firms and universities has been playing out across his numerous attacks on the press, not just through regulatory action, but also through frivolous defamation lawsuits, the absurdities surrounding the 'Gulf of America,' taking away press passes, encouraging his wealthy friends to acquire media properties, and the like. This is a familiar playbook that autocrats the world over have used to try to get a captured, state-affiliated, rather than a free press. No authoritarian can tolerate dissent."

To set up an interview with Professors Speta or Gowder, contact Shanice Harris at [email protected].