Public Interest Briefs

Center to Argue Against Editorializing Ban in U.S. Supreme Court

In the late fall of this year, Center lawyers will appear before the U.S. Supreme Court to challenge the constitutionality of the federal law which prohibits editorializing by public broadcasting stations receiving funds from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB). The Center is representing the California League of Women Voters of California; the Pacifica Foundation, license of public broadcasting stations in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Houston, and Washington D.C.; and Los Angeles Congressman Henry A. Waxman.

The Center first brought the suit, FCC v. League of Women Voters of California, et al., in 1979. Last year, U.S. District Judge Malcolm Lucas agreed with the Center’s First Amendment arguments and enjoined the enforcement of the ban on editorializing. The Justice Department appealed that decision to the U.S. Supreme Court.

While the precise question to be decided in the case is whether the prohibition against editorializing by CPB-funded stations violates the First Amendment, the issues that the Supreme Court will resolve extend far beyond a public broadcaster’s right to editorialize. The arguments offered by the government in defense of this editorializing ban, if adopted by the Court, could seriously threaten the First Amendment freedoms and other fundamental civil rights of all individuals and organizations that receive federal financial support. For example, the government’s primary contention in this case is that any station accepting federal funds must waive its right to editorialize on any matter–even when that editorial speech is supported by the station’s own funds. In other words, by holding The California Court of Appeal has affirmed and expanded the Center’s landmark victory in Sundance v. Municipal Court, which attacked the way the City of Los Angeles arrests persons for being drunk in public.

In its appeal, the Center had asked the Court to go beyond the trial court’s ruling. Justice Amerian, writing for the Court, agreed that police should not be allowed to use “B-wagons” to transport alcoholics or to jail alcoholics repeatedly without ever pressing formal criminal charges.

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