DC Circuit Rejects NAB Challenge to Foreign-Sponsored Content Rules
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit has rejected NAB’s challenge of the FCC’s 2024 foreign-sponsored content rule, said an opinion Friday. “We reject NAB’s challenges,” wrote Judge Karen Henderson (see 2504070019). “Procedurally, the rule complied with the [Administrative Procedure
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Act's] notice-and-comment requirements and did not exceed the Commission’s statutory authority. Substantively, the rule is neither arbitrary nor capricious and passes First Amendment muster.”
Implemented after the NAB successfully challenged a 2021 version, the rules require broadcasters and entities leasing programming time from them to certify that foreign governments aren't sponsoring lessees. NAB argued that the 2024 version expanded the requirements by redefining a lease of airtime to include non-candidate political advertising and public service announcements and that the FCC didn’t provide sufficient notice of those changes. Henderson rejected NAB’s arguments in part because the group lobbied the FCC to include exemptions for both candidate and non-candidate political ads. The FCC decided to only partially grant that request, Henderson wrote. “NAB at least ‘should have anticipated’ that the Commission might alter the rule in response to NAB’s own proposal.”