Opinion ID: 77316
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Retroactive Application and Present Eligibility

Text: 43 Finally, EchoStar argues that SHVIA's ILLR provisions either do not apply retroactively to customers signed up before SHVIA was passed, or if they do apply retroactively, they do so in violation of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution. Relatedly, EchoStar argues that the district court erred by interpreting the Act to imply an obligation upon satellite carriers to constantly re-test and re-qualify subscribers each time the model changes or the model input, such as station power or antenna direction, changes. We address these arguments separately. 44 EchoStar contends that any requirement that it qualify its subscribers by an ILLR model cannot be applied to subscribers who signed up prior to the incorporation of the ILLR provisions into the Act. So applying the SHVIA amendment, according to EchoStar, would be unconstitutionally retroactive. We do not see how this could possibly be so. Neither the Act nor the district court's opinion imposes any requirement that EchoStar ever use an ILLR model in any way. All the Act requires—and has ever required—is that EchoStar subscribers be unserved. The definition of an unserved household was originally, and continues to be, a household that cannot receive, through the use of a conventional outdoor rooftop receiving antenna, an over-the-air signal of grade B intensity (as defined by the Federal Communications Commission) of a primary network station affiliated with that network. Pub. L. No. 100-667, tit. II, § 202, 102 Stat. 3935, 3957; 17 U.S.C. § 119(d)(10)(A). Prior to the SHVIA amendments, courts may or may not have regarded ILLR results as presumptive indications of signal strength. The amendment simply made that presumption clear. But the touchstone of eligibility has always been whether a given household actually receives a Grade B or stronger network signal. By incorporating the ILLR into the Act, Congress gave satellite carriers a relatively cheap and convenient method of presumptively establishing eligibility. It allowed the satellite carriers to satisfy its burden of proof—which could then be rebutted if the network station performed an actual measurement—without on-site testing at every household. To the extent the ILLR model exposed households that were previously considered unserved as served, those households were never actually entitled to service. As such, SHVIA did not apply a retroactive obligation on satellite carriers. Rather it provided an evidentiary tool to enable the carriers to prove what it was always required to prove. 45 EchoStar raises a related but distinct concern: it does not believe that the Act imposes an obligation to re-test and re-qualify subscribers once they have already been qualified. 29 According to Echostar, so long as a subscriber is eligible (apparently, presumptively or actually) upon sign-up, the subscriber is always and forever eligible. We do not interpret the Act to impose such a one-time-only requirement. To begin, we note that the Act is drafted in the present tense, without qualification; it limits the license to transmissions to persons who reside in unserved households. 17 U.S.C. § 119(a)(2)(B)(i) (emphasis added); see also id. § 119(a)(2)(B)(ii)(I) (prescribing use of ILLR model to determin[e] presumptively whether a person resides in an unserved household (emphasis added)); id. § 119(a)(2)(B)(ii)(II) (providing for use of on-site measurements to determine whether a person resides in an unserved household (emphasis added)). The clear indication is that a person must always reside in an unserved household, not just initially. 46 We recognize the possibility, however, that a person can be said to be residing in an unserved household, regardless of current conditions, if a household were deemed forever unserved so long as it met the eligibility requirements at sign-up. We therefore look to the definition of unserved household. All three relevant definitions refer to present criteria: either a household that (1)  cannot receive a Grade B signal; (2)  is subject to a waiver; or (3)  does not receive a signal of Grade A intensity and otherwise qualifies for grandfathered status. Id. § 119(d)(10) (emphasis added). None of these definitions refer to sign-up, despite the ease with which Congress could have included such a qualification if that had been its intention. 47 We note, moreover, that there is no requirement that network stations challenge a subscriber at the time of sign-up or any specified period of time thereafter. EchoStar's interpretation, however, would either transform the ILLR model into de facto conclusive evidence of eligibility (because it would be difficult to rebut the presumption with an actual measurement done at a later time if eligibility referred only to eligibility at sign-up) or force networks to perform on-site measurements for every subscriber at the time of sign-up—the latter being a requirement that appears nowhere in the Act. Accordingly, we conclude that the Act imposes a requirement that a household be presently unserved, not unserved solely at sign-up, as EchoStar suggests.