Source: https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F2/829/157/226559/
Timestamp: 2019-04-20 02:29:04+00:00

Document:
Petition for Review of an Order of the Federal Communications commission.
John C. Armor, Towson, Md., for petitioners.
C. Grey Pash, Jr., Counsel, F.C.C., with whom J. Paul McGrath, Asst. Atty. Gen., Jack D. Smith, Gen. Counsel, Daniel M. Armstrong, Associate Gen. Counsel, F.C.C., Andrea Limmer and Catherine G. O'Sullivan, Attys., Dept. of Justice, Washington, D.C., were on brief, for respondents.
Joseph DeFranco, Washington, D.C., John W. Zucker, New York City and Howard Monderer, Washington, D.C., were on brief, for intervenors, CBS, Inc., and NBC, Inc.
Carl R. Ramey, Washington, D.C., entered an appearance for intervenor American Broadcasting Companies, Inc.
Before ROBINSON, EDWARDS and SCALIA* , Circuit Judges.
Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge SPOTTSWOOD W. ROBINSON, III.
On July 24, 1984, Johnson and Walton wrote a series of letters to the League of Women Voters, the three major private networks, and the Public Broadcasting System, requesting inclusion in the League of Women Voters' presidential and vice-presidential debates scheduled for and conducted in the fall of that year.2 On August 15, they filed a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission against the networks, the Democratic and Republican National Committees, the major party candidates, and the League, asserting upcoming violations of the Communications Act3 and the First Amendment,4 and seeking an order that would prohibit the televising of any debate from which they were excluded.5 The Commission's staff denied the complaint on October 4, 1984;6 the Commission rejected an application for review of the staff ruling a day later.7 This petition for review followed.
In considering petitioners' claim, we must remain mindful of the regulatory framework that has evolved under the Communications Act and the decisions evaluating the broadcast-access provisions of the Act. Petitioners' argument essentially boils down to a demand for broadcast access, and access claims based upon various constitutional and statutory theories have been heard by the Supreme Court and this court on a number of occasions.12 The broadcasting industry stands in a unique relationship to the First Amendment; its tremendous power to inform and shape public opinion and the immutable scarcity of broadcast frequencies have created both tremendous opportunities and serious hazards for free expression. The broadcast-access decisions of the Supreme Court and this court have analyzed comprehensively the many competing First Amendment interests affected by disputes over the control of and access to the airwaves. Congress, and the Commission acting under congressional authority, have responded by crafting an extensive system of government regulation that balances the potentially conflicting speech interests of individuals, broadcasters, and the general public.
We therefore first examine petitioners' arguments in the light of the prior cases dealing with First Amendment access claims and the Communications Act. We conclude that the Commission properly determined that petitioners had no right recognized by the Communications Act or the broadcast-access precedents to be included in the televised debates. We then proceed to determine whether the contentions petitioners base upon the ballot-access cases resolved under the First and Fifteenth Amendments raise significant First Amendment issues not adjudicated in earlier decisions. We find that petitioners have failed to show any intrusion upon the electoral process that would require the grant to them of access privileges beyond those conferred by the Communications Act. We therefore affirm the Commission's order.
We face a far more pervasive scheme of regulation, and a significantly greater congressional sensitivity when, as here, the First Amendment rights of candidates for public office and their supporters are involved. There is, accordingly, a particularly strong obligation to consider petitioners' claim of a right of access to the broadcast media against the backdrop of the balance of First Amendment interests embodied in the Communications Act, the policies of the Commission, and the caselaw. Candidates are accorded greater access to the broadcast media than other citizens; they are afforded not only a limited privilege of reasonable access18 but also the right to match any nonexempt use of a broadcasting station by their opponents,19 and freedom to purchase advertising space at the lowest available rate.20 These statutory rights of access make clear that Congress intended a wide variety of political views to reach the general public during the course of an election campaign.
The Chisholm petitioners did not attack the Commission's Section 315(a) policy on First Amendment grounds. That challenge was made in this court in Kennedy I.28 The question there was whether the legislative scheme embodied in Section 315(a) "transgress [ed] the First Amendment interest of a candidate demanding an opportunity to respond to another candidate's statements on an excepted occasion."29 We felt then, as we do now, that the answer was evident. We read the Supreme Court's decision in Columbia Broadcasting System v. Democratic National Committee as a holding that " 'no individual member of the public [has a right] to broadcast his own particular views on any matter.' "30 Congress, we noted, has chosen to protect the public's First Amendment rights in broadcasting "by relying on broadcasters as public trustees, periodically accountable for their stewardship, to use their discretion in ensuring the public's access to conflicting ideas."31 The Supreme Court had found in Columbia Broadcasting System, we said, that the congressional choice of a public trustee system over a system in which everyone had access to the media was reasonable in view of the scarcity of broadcast frequencies.
We can perceive no basis upon which to distinguish the case at bar from Columbia Broadcasting System and Kennedy I. Indeed, petitioners present a far weaker constitutional thesis than the ones those cases rejected. They seek, not general access, as in the former, nor an opportunity to respond to a particular broadcast, as in the latter, but rather the specific right to appear on a specific program--a program not organized by the broadcasters, but by a third party. Thus, viewed in light of the First Amendment balance struck in the statutory scheme, as delineated in the governing caselaw, petitioners have stated no legally cognizable claim to participate in the broadcast debates.
In addition, petitioners' demand for inclusion in a particular program raises "the risk of an enlargement of Government control over the content of broadcast discussion of public issues."32 Petitioners would have the Commission forbid the networks from broadcasting a debate that excluded them.33 While broadcasters do not have the same First Amendment journalistic freedom as newspapers, Congress and the courts have been reluctant to recognize an unlimited right of governmental interference in the affairs of broadcasters.
The access demanded by petitioners in this case, however, would constitute a far greater intrusion on broadcasting discretion than the carefully limited statutory access upheld by the Supreme Court in that case.
We recognize the importance of preserving a large measure of journalistic discretion for broadcasters as a serious First Amendment issue, and this provides additional support for our holding that the Communications Act and the broadcast access cases decided under the First Amendment do not support petitioners' claims to be included in the televised debates.
Petitioners contend, however, that this analysis is thwarted by what they assert as a newly-emergent social fact: that participation in nationally-televised presidential and vice-presidential debates is now a prerequisite to election. They insist, therefore, that their exclusion from the debates effectively excluded them from the ballot and denied voters sympathetic to their cause their First Amendment right to associate through the election and to cast their votes effectively for the candidate of their choice. They rely upon prior decisions of the Supreme Court striking down restrictions on a candidate's access to the ballot as violative of the First or Fifteenth Amendments.
Petitioners' First Amendment claims thus differ from those asserted in Columbia Broadcasting System v. Democratic National Committee and the other broadcast access cases. Safeguarding the integrity of the electoral process is a fundamental task of the Constitution, and we must be keenly sensitive to signs that its validity may be impaired. Petitioners' argument, if valid, could affect the balance of First Amendment rights struck in the Communications Act, and might force a reappraisal of competing interests. We need not address questions of that sort, however, for petitioners have not demonstrated a restriction of access to the electoral process that the First Amendment proscribes.
In Terry v. Adams,44 the Supreme Court held that a racially-exclusionary primary held by a private county political organization trespassed upon the Fifteenth Amendment.45 Black citizens were excluded from voting in primary elections for nominations to county offices conducted by the all-white Jaybird Party. Since the winners of Jaybird Party elections typically ran without opposition in Democratic primaries and general elections,46 black voters were effectively deprived of meaningful participation in the selection of county officials.47 No such barrier was present in this case, where voters were not hindered in their ability to cast their votes for petitioners or otherwise take part in the electoral process merely by virtue of petitioners' exclusion from the televised debates.
Petitioners' claims are functionally indistinguishable from the one found lacking in Buckley. Petitioners' supporters were not hindered from casting their ballots for them, nor were petitioners hobbled in waging their campaign. While their inclusion in the televised debates undoubtedly would have benefited their campaign, the Supreme Court has held that the Constitution does not demand that all candidates be subsidized to the point that all are equal in terms of financial strength and publicity.58 Terry and Anderson were concerned with banishment of candidates and voters from the political arena, not with overcoming disadvantages in money and image frequently encountered by minor-party candidates.
We decline petitioners' invitation to embark upon the complex and hazardous task of recasting the First Amendment balance embodied in the Communications Act and the policies of the Commission. We remain mindful that the Communications Act reconciles not only competing policy choices, but also interests of constitutional stature in constant tension with each other. While we will not turn a deaf ear to any plausible assertion of constitutional right, we must be circumspect in any effort to vindicate an alleged constitutional infraction at the expense of constitutional interests at least equally valid and compelling. In the present case, we find the First Amendment interests of candidates, broadcasters and the public adequately served by the adjustments made in the Communications Act, and perceive no basis for disturbing the Commission's denial of petitioners' complaint.
4 U.S. Const. amend. 1.
Even though the 1984 election is now over, no one has suggested that the case is moot, and we are satisfied that it is not. The issues properly presented, and their effects on minor-party candidacies, will persist in future elections, and within a time frame too short to allow resolution through litigation. This is, therefore, a case where the controversy is "capable of repetition, yet evading review," Storer v. Brown, 415 U.S. 724, 737 n. 8, 94 S. Ct. 1274, 1282 n. 8, 39 L. Ed. 2d 714, 727 n. 8 (1974) (quoting Southern Pac. Terminal Co. v. ICC, 219 U.S. 498, 515, 31 S. Ct. 279, 283, 55 L. Ed. 310, 316 (1911)). Accord Anderson v. Celebrezze, 460 U.S. 780, 784 n. 3, 103 S. Ct. 1564, 1567 n. 3, 75 L. Ed. 2d 547, 554 n. 3 (1983), and as such may be decided now.

References: v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v.