Two Years Later, The Supreme Court Still Doesn’t Want To Review Red Lion v. FCC.

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[Commentary] The Supreme Court stubbornly refuses to address Red Lion. Not only did Minority Television Project provide the opportunity to overrule Red Lion and abolish all those pesky ownership limits and public interest obligations, it framed this as an opportunity to further expand Citizens United.

How could the majority possibly resist, especially given the groupthink that the Supreme Court is simply lusting to overturn Red Lion and totally deregulate the broadcast industry at the first opportunity? And yet, somehow, they resisted. The FCC’s authority to impose broadcast ownership limits (and other spectrum ownership limits for that matter) remains not only intact, but subject to the lenient “rational basis” standard of scrutiny.


Two Years Later, The Supreme Court Still Doesn’t Want To Review Red Lion v. FCC.