The United States Supreme Court today unanimously held FCC’s indecency standards were unconstitutionally vague under the Fifth Amendment. But in Federal Communication Commission v Fox , the Court did not address the First Amendment challenges to the FCC’s rules. The Court left the FCC “free to modify its current indecency policy,” but did not issue any mandate requiring the Commission to do so. The following statement can be attributed to Berin Szoka , President of TechFreedom:
For the second time, the Supreme Court has allowed the FCC to continue censoring broadcast television. As Justice Ginsburg noted, the Court should have recognized the profound changes in the media landscape since its 1978 Pacifica decision. In a world dominated by cable TV and, increasingly, Internet video, broadcasting is no longer “uniquely pervasive in the lives of Americans.” Nor is broadcasting “uniquely accessible to children,” since technology has empowered parents to control their children’s consumption of objectionable content. Parents are empowered to choose among many sources of video content.
Today’s decision lets stand an odious precedent that will allow the FCC to write censorship rules for the third time. Essentially, the Court has kicked the can down the road to some future court to decide whether some media are less equal than others under the First Amendment.
Last fall, TechFreedom joined an amicus brief in support of Fox and free speech with the Cato Institute, the Center for Democracy & Technology, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and Public Knowledge, asking the Court to recognize that advances in technology have made Pacifica obsolete. Szoka summarized the brief in an an op-ed published in the Huffington Post.
Szoka is available for comment at media@techfreedom.org . Find/share this release on Facebook, Twitter or Google+.