Source: https://case-law.vlex.com/vid/518-u-s-727-605320838
Timestamp: 2019-04-19 20:28:36+00:00

Document:
Party Name: DENVER AREA EDUCATIONAL TELECOMMUNICATIONS CONSORTIUM, INC., v. FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION et al.
FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION et al.
These cases involve three sections of the Cable Television Consumer Protection and Competition Act of 1992 (Act), as implemented by Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulations. Both § 10(a) of the Actwhich applies to "leased access channels" reserved under federal law for commercial lease by parties unaffiliated with the cable television system operatorand § 10(c)which regulates "public access channels" required by local governments for public, educational, and governmental programmingessentially permit the operator to allow or prohibit "programming" that it "reasonably believes. . . depicts sexual. . . activities or organs in a patently offensive manner." Under § 10(b), which applies only to leased access channels, operators are required to segregate "patently offensive" programming on a single channel, to block that channel from viewer access, and to unblock it (or later to reblock it) within 30 days of a subscriber's written request. Between 1984, when Congress authorized municipalities to require operators to create public access channels, and the Act's passage, federal law prohibited operators from exercising any editorial control over the content of programs broadcast over either type of access channel. Petitioners sought judicial review of §§ 10(a), (b), and (c), and the en banc Court of Appeals held that all three sections (as implemented) were consistent with the First Amendment.
The judgment is affirmed in part and reversed in part.
56 F.3d 105, affirmed in part and reversed in part.
judge a program's value through the company it keeps or refrain from subscribing to the segregated channel out of fear that the operator will disclose its subscriber list. Moreover, § 10(b) is not appropriately tailored to achieve its basic, legitimate objective of protecting children from exposure to "patently offensive" materials. Less restrictive means utilized by Congress elsewhere to protect children from "patently offensive" sexual material broadcast on cable channels indicate that § 10(b) is overly restrictive while its benefits are speculative. These include some provisions of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which utilizes blocking without written request, "V-chips," and other significantly less restrictive means, and the "lockbox" requirement that has been in place since the Cable Act of 1984. Pp. 753-760.
Justice Breyer, joined by Justice Stevens, Justice O'Connor, and Justice Souter, concluded in Parts I and II that § 10(a) is consistent with the First Amendment. Pp. 737-753.
that permits private cable operators to make editorial decisions, persuasively establishes that § 10(a) is a sufficiently tailored response to an extraordinarily important problem involving a complex balance of interests. Sable, supra, at 128, and Turner, supra, at 637-641, distinguished. Pp. 737-748.
(b) Petitioners' reliance on this Court's "public forum" cases is unavailing. It is unnecessary and unwise to decide whether or how to apply the public forum doctrine to leased access channels. First, it is not clear whether that doctrine should be imported wholesale into common carriage regulation of such a new and changing area. Second, although limited public forums are permissible, the Court has not yet determined whether the decision to limit a forum is necessarily subject to the highest level of scrutiny, and these cases do not require that it do so now. Finally, and most important, the features that make § 10(a) an acceptable constraint on speech also make it an acceptable limitation on access to the claimed public forum. Pp. 749-750.
(c) Section 10(a)'s definition of the materials it regulates is not impermissibly vague. Because the language used is similar to that adopted in Miller v. California, 413 U.S. 15, 24, as a "guidelin[e]" for state obscenity laws, it would appear to narrow cable operators' programscreening authority to materials that involve the same kind of sexually explicit materials that would be obscene under Miller, but that might have "serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value" or nonprurient purposes, ibid. That the definition is not overly broad is further indicated by this Court's construction of the phrase "patently offensive," see Pacifica, supra, at 748, 750, which would narrow the category late at night when the audience is basically adult, and by the fact that § 10(a) permits operators to screen programs only pursuant to a "written and published policy." The definition's "reasonabl[e] belie[f]" qualifier seems designed to provide a legal excuse for the operator's honest mistake, and it constrains the operator's discretion as much as it protects it. Pp. 750-753.
community considers valuable strongly suggests that a "cable operator's veto" is more likely to erroneously exclude borderline programs that should be broadcast, than to achieve the statute's basic objective of protecting children. Fourth, the Government has not shown that there is a significant enough problem of patently offensive broadcasts to children, over public access channels, that justifies the restriction imposed by § 10(c). Consequently, § 10(c) violates the First Amendment. Pp. 760-766.

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