FCC Argues It Has Authority to Alter National Cap, in UHF Discount Court Challenge
The FCC has the authority to modify the national broadcast ownership cap, and public interest groups lack standing to challenge the agency’s decision to resurrect the UHF discount, the agency said in a brief (in Pacer) filed Tuesday in the…
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U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. The brief was the FCC’s response to challenges of the discount’s reinstatement. Free Press, the National Hispanic Media Coalition, Common Cause and several other public interest groups argued that the FCC lacks the authority to change the cap. That argument should be rejected because in prior filings supporting the removal of the UHF discount, those groups said the FCC does possess such authority, the brief said. The FCC can alter the cap because Congress has passed up previous chances to take that power away from the FCC, instead ordering the agency to revise the cap, the brief said. The FCC “has ample discretion to reverse course” on the discount, and the prior FCC’s decision to do away with it “was itself arbitrary and capricious,” the FCC said. The challenges from the public interest groups are also invalid because they haven’t shown the reinstated cap causes them any injury, the FCC said. “The Commission has now reasonably determined that because the discount and the cap are interrelated, they should be analyzed in tandem,” the brief said. Senior FCC officials said the agency will take up the matter of the national cap before the end of 2017 (see 1710260049).