Opinion ID: 699517
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The challenge to the statutes as applied

Text: 50 The more difficult question is whether the statutes as applied pass muster under the teaching Bantam Books v. Sullivan, 372 U.S. 58, 83 S.Ct. 631, 9 L.Ed.2d 584 (1963). We agree with the appellants that some of the Commission's procedures are troubling but, on the basis of the record before us, we cannot agree that those procedures violate the first amendment. The centerpiece of the appellants' grievance is that: 51 [B]ecause of the delays of securing administrative and judicial determinations in indecency forfeiture proceedings, and uncertainties as to the permissible scope of FCC indecency regulation they attempt to conform their conduct to the indecency standards articulated by the FCC and its Commissioners, whether or not they believe those standards are constitutional. 52 That simply does not establish a violation of the Constitution. 53 In Bantam Books, Rhode Island had established a Commission to Encourage Morality in Youth and authorized it to determine whether publications were objectionable for sale, distribution or display to youths. 372 U.S. at 61, 83 S.Ct. at 634. Upon an affirmative finding, the Morality Commission would send a letter urging the distributor of the offending material not to carry the publication, and would refer the matter to the local police for investigation and possible prosecution under the state obscenity law. Id. at 62, 83 S.Ct. at 635. The Supreme Court struck down this scheme because it amount[s] to ... governmental censorship devoid of the constitutionally required safeguards for state regulation of obscenity, and thus abridge[s] First Amendment liberties. Id. at 64, 83 S.Ct. at 636. 54 The lesson of Bantam Books is that the state may not move to suppress speech by means of a scheme that, as a practical matter, forecloses the speaker from obtaining a judicial determination of whether the targeted speech is unprotected, lest the state be able effectively to suppress protected speech. In that case it was established, as a matter of fact, that a notice from the Commission would cause the distributor to cease selling the listed publications without a judicial determination of whether the material was legally subject to proscription. Id. at 62-64, 83 S.Ct. at 635-36. Thus, the Court concluded, What Rhode Island has done, in fact, has been to subject the distribution of publications to a system of prior administrative restraints, since the Commission is not a judicial body and its decisions to list particular publications as objectionable do not follow judicial determinations that such publications may lawfully be banned. Id. at 70, 83 S.Ct. at 639. 55 The appellants argue that the FCC has similarly implemented a system of prior administrative restraint that, for want of appropriate procedural safeguards, forces protected and unprotected material alike off the air. See, e.g., Freedman v. Maryland, 380 U.S. 51, 85 S.Ct. 734, 13 L.Ed.2d 649 (1965) (striking down motion-picture censorship scheme for lack of such safeguards). Unlike the state in Freedman, however, the Commission is not administering anything akin to a literal prior restraint. Broadcasters are free to air what they want; if and only if what they air turns out to transgress established guidelines do they face a penalty--but that is very much after the fact, not prior thereto. The Commission's ability to penalize a broadcaster in this manner was upheld by the Supreme Court in Pacifica, where the Court specifically rejected the argument that the agency's enforcement of the ban on indecency violates the statutory prohibition of censorship by the Commission. See 438 U.S. at 735-38, 98 S.Ct. at 3033-35. 56 As the Court recognized in Bantam Books, however, a scheme may also be a prior restraint in effect even though specific materials are not evaluated prior to publication (or here broadcast) if that scheme in practice causes a speaker of reasonable fortitude to censor itself in order to conform with an unconstitutional standard. This case therefore turns upon the question whether the regime that leads broadcasters to attempt to conform their conduct to [FCC] indecency standards is analogous to the scheme that forced booksellers in Rhode Island to drop publications officially declared objectionable for fear of a possible prosecution for selling obscene materials. 57 We cannot help but conclude that the appellants have failed to establish any essential similarity between this case and Bantam Books. Unlike the Rhode Island Commission, which sought to regulate materials that could not be proscribed as obscene, 372 U.S. at 62 n. 4, 83 S.Ct. at 635 n. 4, so far as this record shows the FCC is not enforcing the statutory ban on indecency against material that is not indecent. Again unlike the Rhode Island Commission, which could and did avoid judicial oversight because the mere threat of prosecution coerced booksellers into complying with its recommendations, id. at 62 n. 5, 83 S.Ct. at 635 n. 5, we have no indication that the FCC has done anything actively to discourage judicial review of any indecency forfeiture it imposed. That no case has yet progressed to judicial review may be the effect of any of several inoffensive causes: the Commission has only recently stepped up its enforcement efforts; the violators penalized thus far may very well have broadcast the indecency as charged and thus seen no point in contesting the forfeiture in court; and broadcasters may be self-censoring only indecent material, eliminating the need for many prosecutions. Indeed, some degree of self-censorship is inevitable and not necessarily undesirable so long as proper standards are available. See Pacifica, 438 U.S. at 743, 98 S.Ct. at 3037 (At most [self-censorship] will deter only the broadcasting of patently offensive references to excretory and sexual organs and activities. While some of the references may be protected, they surely lie at the periphery of First Amendment concern). 58 Finally, there is no indication that the FCC--unlike Rhode Island's free-roving Commission to Encourage Morality in Youth, 372 U.S. at 70, 83 S.Ct. at 639--has failed or will fail to follow judicial guidelines for determining what is indecent and what is not, as they have developed and will develop in judicial decisions. The suggestion that every determination of indecency must be a judicial one simply proves too much; the Commission could then play no role in developing or enforcing the Congress's declared policy of banning indecency from the air-waves during certain hours of the day. We have no indication that the Commission is developing a body of precedent in any way at odds with the first amendment, or that the agency would continue to do so in the face of a corrective court decision. While the prospect of a forfeiture trial may understandably cause some broadcasters to forego judicial review of a Commission determination that a program was indecent, we find no indication in this record that the FCC is taking the opportunity afforded thereby to impose unconstitutional restrictions upon broadcast speech. 59 Under the statute as administered, a broadcaster need do nothing at all until it is served with a complaint, at which point it is entitled to a trial de novo in district court. Nothing but the timing would be different if the Congress were to change the current scheme so as to allow the Commission to bring a forfeiture action in district court immediately after the airing of an allegedly indecent broadcast, which would be unquestionably constitutional. The distinction, i.e., the delay inherent in the current scheme, is of constitutional significance only if it burdens broadcast speech that is not indecent. The parties have stipulated that some speech is being burdened in that broadcasters conform their conduct to the indecency standards articulated by the FCC ... whether or not they believe those standards are unconstitutional. The broadcasters would go one step farther and argue that the delay thereby chills protected as well as indecent speech; however, they have failed to make any such showing.  60 Alternatively, the broadcasters' claim might be more compelling if in a particular case the Commission increased the fine for a subsequent violation or decided not to renew a license when the broadcaster had neither acquiesced in the former determination of indecency nor yet had its day in court. Such a situation creates a greater risk that material that is not indecent is being kept off the air. Even that, however, would still be the stuff upon which an individual, not a generic, challenge to enforcement would be built. 61 Several additional factors might also serve to distinguish the scheme administered by the Commission from the one struck down in Bantam Books. As the district court noted: (1) that case concerned the printed word, which, unlike broadcasting, has historically enjoyed the broadest protection under the first amendment; (2) the FCC, unlike the Rhode Island Commission, gives a putative violator notice and an opportunity to respond to the charge against it; (3) the decisions of the FCC are subject to judicial review; and (4) the broadcaster that would avoid a dispute with the FCC need only move its arguably indecent material to a different time of day, not refrain from broadcasting it altogether. In light of the appellants' failure to show that speech that is not indecent is in fact being chilled, however, we need not decide whether these differences actually serve to distinguish the two regimes. Still, they are points of difference, and they serve to underscore the bottom line: The allegation that the FCC is chilling protected speech by means of the forfeiture scheme is not nearly as compelling as was the corresponding claim in Bantam Books. There is no indication in the case law that such a scheme is unconstitutional absent some showing that the agency is forcing off the air material that is not indecent.