Opinion ID: 543590
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: pei

Text: 55 PEI faces a different standing test from the Cable Association, since it does not claim to be suing on behalf of the cable operators. To have standing, PEI must first satisfy what faces all parties bringing suit in federal court--Article III's limitation of federal court jurisdiction to the resolution of Cases or Controversies. PEI must show (1) an actual or threatened injury suffered as a result of the putatively illegal conduct of the defendants, (2) that its injury fairly can be traced to the challenged action, and (3) that this injury is likely to find redress in a favorable decision. Valley Forge College, 454 U.S. at 472, 102 S.Ct. at 758. 56 The defendants' brief does not challenge PEI's standing under Article III, except perhaps with an oblique statement which might be read to question whether the remedy sought will benefit PEI: the defendants claim the Playboy plaintiffs would not derive any direct benefit from [this] action, since Section 558 does not afford them any shield from obscenity prosecution. Appellants' Brief at 13. The plaintiffs' complaint alleges that PEI loses money and suffers intangible losses when cable operators stop transmitting the Playboy Channel, and that cable operators will drop the Playboy Channel rather than face an obscenity prosecution. SA at 13, 19. The parties have stipulated that Teleponce had a reasonable fear of such prosecution. Id. at 60. Regardless of whether PEI may later face its own obscenity prosecution, an injunction against prosecution of Teleponce will effectively remove an imminent financial threat to PEI. Article III does not prevent the court from addressing PEI's claim. 57 What the defendants do challenge at length is what they characterize as PEI's basing a suit entirely on the legal right of a third person. This invokes the prudential, discretionary limit federal courts have imposed on their exercise of Article III powers--the rule against jus tertii standing. A plaintiff generally must assert its own legal rights, without resting its claim for relief on the rights of third parties. Secretary of State of Md. v. J.H. Munson Co., 467 U.S. 947, 955, 104 S.Ct. 2839, 2846, 81 L.Ed.2d 786 (1984); Warth, 422 U.S. at 499, 95 S.Ct. at 772. See generally, H. Monaghan, Third Party Standing, 84 Colum.Law Rev. 277 (1984). 58 PEI, as did the district court, relies on Bantam Books, Inc. v. Sullivan, 372 U.S. 58, 83 S.Ct. 631, 9 L.Ed.2d 584 (1963), as an answer to this problem. In Bantam Books, four out-of-state book publishers sued to enjoin the actions of Rhode Island's Commission to Encourage Morality in Youth, claiming that the Commission's notification to local distributors that it found certain of the publisher's books to be objectionable violated the First Amendment and was causing the publishers economic harm. The Court recognized the publishers' right to sue even though none of the Commission's actions were directed toward them. Id. at 64-65 n. 6, 83 S.Ct. at 636-37 n. 6. PEI analogizes itself to the publishers and Teleponce to the distributors, claiming that Bantam Books establishes its standing. 59 Bantam Books alone cannot support PEI's claim of standing. The Supreme Court plainly stated that the publishers in Bantam Books were asserting their own first amendment rights, not the distributors': 60 [A]ppellants are not in the position of mere proxies arguing another's constitutional rights. The constitutional guarantee of freedom of the press embraces the circulation of books as well as their publication, and the direct and obviously intended result of the Commission's activities was to curtail the circulation in Rhode Island of books published by the appellants. 61 Id. (citations omitted). At this point in its suit, PEI is not asserting the first amendment rights of anyone. PEI does not claim, although perhaps it could, that threats to prosecute a cable operator under an obscenity statute which is effectively preempted by federal law violates its own first amendment rights. Its claim for relief now depends entirely upon the immunity from prosecution provided by the Cable Act. The defendants argue that this immunity is personal to the cable operator, and does not and is not intended to benefit the cable programmer. 62 The rule against jus tertii standing is not absolute. The Supreme Court has recognized the ability of plaintiffs to raise the rights of others in many cases. [T]here are situations where competing considerations outweigh any prudential rationale against third-party standing, and ... this Court has relaxed the prudential-standing limitation when such concerns are present. J.H. Munson Co., 467 U.S. at 956, 104 S.Ct. at 2846. When a special relationship exists between the plaintiff and the third party whose rights are allegedly infringed, so that the infringement of the third parties' rights restricts the plaintiff's own rights, jus tertii standing may be appropriate. E.g., Caplin & Drysdale, Chartered v. United States, --- U.S. ----, 109 S.Ct. 2646, 2651 n. 3, 105 L.Ed.2d 528 (1989); Eisenstadt v. Baird, 405 U.S. 438, 443-46, 92 S.Ct. 1029, 1033-35, 31 L.Ed.2d 349 (1972). Also, 63 Where practical obstacles prevent a party from asserting rights on behalf of itself, for example, the Court has recognized the doctrine of jus tertii standing. In such a situation, the Court considers whether the third party has sufficient injury-in-fact to satisfy the Art. III case-or-controversy requirement, and whether, as a prudential matter, the third party can reasonably be expected properly to frame the issues and present them with the necessary adversarial zeal. See, e.g., Craig v. Boren, 429 U.S. 190, 193-194 [97 S.Ct. 451, 454-55, 50 L.Ed.2d 397] (1976). 64 J.H. Munson Co., 467 U.S. at 956, 104 S.Ct. at 2846. Both of these considerations are present here. 65 First, there is a unique, reciprocal relationship between the cable operator's statutory immunity, upon which PEI bases its suit, and PEI's own statutory right to mandatory access. Narrowly viewed, of course, Sec. 558 protects only cable operators from liability, not programmers like PEI. Nevertheless, the cable operator's immunity benefits the leased access programmer in a very real sense--by helping guarantee its statutory right to access part of the operator's channel capacity. 11 66 Congress provided for compelled access in order to assure that cable systems provide the widest possible diversity of information services and sources to the public, consistent with the First Amendment's goal of a robust marketplace of ideas.... House Rep. 84-934 at 19; 1984 U.S.Code and Admin.News at 4656. See 47 U.S.C. Sec. 532(a). Congress also recognized that a necessary concomitant to forced access and loss of editorial control is the cable operator's immunity from liability. Id. at 95; 1984 U.S.Code and Admin.News at 4732. (The defendants seem to concede that this immunity is essential to effectuate the mandatory access provision. Appellants' Brief at 44.) Without this protection, cable operators would face a legislatively-mandated, undeterminable exposure to both civil and criminal liability. Faced with such a threat, operators would likely resist any forced access, either by colluding with unobjectionable, safe programmers to fill up the required percentage of mandatory access channels, or by avoiding being subject to forced access by maintaining less than thirty-six activated channels. This would defeat the basic purpose of the mandatory access provisions by encouraging cable operators to maintain their monopoly power over the content of programming transmitted. With the immunity in place, however, the cable programmer's access is more secure, since it removes a strong incentive not to grant access. Prosecuting, or threatening to prosecute a cable operator for the content of leased access channel programming despite the immunity poses the same threat to the programmer's right to compelled access as if there was no statutory immunity in the first place. 67 Second, the plaintiffs' complaint alleges that cable operators will drop their carriage of the Playboy Channel rather than defend an obscenity prosecution. J.H. Munson Co. recognized that when the individuals who are engaging in allegedly protected activity are reluctant to raise their own rights in the face of threatened official sanctions, this presents a practical obstacle which permits third party standing. 467 U.S. at 956, 104 S.Ct. at 2846. 68 We see no reason to think that PEI is not an effective advocate of the cable operator's rights. Unlike the plaintiff in Friedman v. Harold, 638 F.2d 262 (1st Cir.1981), who sought to assert the right of a third party to the actual detriment of the right-holder, PEI's assertion of the Sec. 558 immunity is in the cable operator's interest. See American Library Ass'n v. Odom, 818 F.2d 81 (D.C.1987) (plaintiff researchers who failed to show community of interests between themselves and library could not assert library's property rights). The community of interests between the operators and PEI in this suit is shown by the Cable Association's presence as co-plaintiff, and the operators' assent to the Association's participation as their representative. 69 Finally, although the defendants do not make an issue of it, we note that the Cable Act does provide a cause of action in favor of persons aggrieved by the failure or refusal of a cable operator to make channel capacity available according to Sec. 532. 12 It is arguable that cable programmers should be required to use this remedy to vindicate their right of access, rather than basing a Sec. 1983 suit on the statutory immunity of the cable operators. However, the Cable Act's legislative history indicates that Congress included Sec. 532(d) & (e) to prevent cable operators, who might naturally be reluctant to provide leased access capacity, from frustrating the leased access provision through subterfuge. House Rep. 84-934 at 50, 54-55; 1984 U.S.Code and Admin.News at 4687, 4691-92. Nowhere in its discussion of these provisions does the House Report address the threat to the goals of the leased access provision which can be posed from outside parties such as state enforcement agencies. 70 At this point, the question of standing and the previously considered question of the availability of Sec. 1983 relief become quite close. As noted in Section III above, when a federal provision which creates a right at the same time provides a means for vindicating that right, Congress may have intended to preclude resort to Sec. 1983. However, because the remedy created by Sec. 532(d) & (e) protects the cable programmer's right of access against the cable operator, but does not protect the operator's Sec. 558 immunity from prosecution by outside parties, it is not the comprehensive remedial scheme which might show a legislative intent to make Sec. 1983 unavailable. See, e.g., Chapman, 441 U.S. at 612-20, 99 S.Ct. at 1913-17. Like the district court, see 698 F.Supp. at 410-11, we find no indication that Congress intended Sec. 532(d) & (e) to be the programmer's sole means of recourse when its right to access is threatened. Since PEI's Sec. 1983 suit against the defendants is not inconsistent with the scope or purpose of the right of action granted it against cable operators, we see no reason to restrict PEI to that remedy. 71 In summary, then, because the threat to the cable operator's immunity posed by local prosecution also threatens PEI's statutory right of access, and because PEI has alleged a reluctance on the part of the operators to defend their rights based on their statutory immunity, PEI has standing to raise the cable operator's immunity. 13 72