Opinion ID: 185831
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Under- and Overinclusiveness

Text: 21 As the Commission points out, unlicensed LPFM transmissions can not only prevent the public from receiving the signals of licensed broadcasters, see, e.g., United States v. Any and All Radio Station Transmission Equip., 204 F.3d 658 (6th Cir.2000) (interference complaint against pirate by licensed FM station); they can also, as we have seen, interfere with public safety communications and aircraft frequencies. Low Power Proposal, 14 F.C.C.R. 2471, at ¶ 65. Because the Government has chosen to address the problem of interference through socialization and administrative allocation of the right to broadcast, rather than relying upon the common law, see Thomas W. Hazlett, The Rationality of U.S. Regulation of the Broadcast Spectrum, 33 J.L. & ECON. 133, 148-52 (1990); and Ronald H. Coase, The Federal Communications Commission, 2 J.L. & ECON. 1, 14 (1959) (treating problem of interference as he would later treat other incompatible uses in The Problem of Social Cost, 3 J.L. & ECON. 1 (1959)), there can be no doubt it has a substantial interest in ensuring compliance with the Communications Act and in particular with its central requirement of a license to broadcast. 22 Ruggiero argues, nonetheless, that the character qualification is impermissibly underinclusive because it does not disqualify persons guilty of serious misconduct other than piracy — murder, rape, child abuse, bribery, fraud, illegal wiretapping, antitrust violations, [and] lying to the FCC, to give but a few examples. He continues in the same vein: 23 Because Congress has ignored a broad range of misconduct giving rise to precisely the same harm that supposedly motivated it to [enact the character qualification provision], Sanjour v. EPA, 56 F.3d [85,] 95 [(D.C.Cir.1995) (en banc)], it is serious[ly] doubt[ful] that the character qualification provision substantially advances the governmental interest in increasing compliance with broadcast laws and regulations in a meaningful way. 24 This is nonsense on stilts. 25 First, Ruggiero's factual premise is incorrect, not to say absurd. The Congress has not ignored misconduct giving rise to precisely the same harm that caused it to impose the character qualification. Not only are murderers, rapists, child molesters, and the like not particularly associated with the harms caused by unlicensed broadcasting, the harms that these malefactors do cause are not without other and more severe penalties (state or federal) than ineligibility for an LPFM license. 26 Second, it was entirely reasonable for the Congress to make the policy judgment that all broadcast pirates, and only broadcast pirates, should be disqualified categorically from holding an LPFM license while leaving to the Commission the discretion to evaluate on a case-by-case basis the myriad other ways an applicant's character can be drawn into question. All broadcast pirates, by definition, have violated already the requirement of obtaining a broadcast license. As Judge Henderson pointedly asked in her dissent from the decision of the panel, [w]hat could be more reasonable or logical than to suspect that those who ignored the Commission's LPFM broadcast regulations in the past are likely to do so in the future and therefore to head them off[?] 278 F.3d at 1335. Indeed, even as it adopted its own more forgiving approach to pirates before the Congress enacted the RBPA, the Commission acknowledged that past illegal broadcast operations reflect on that entity's proclivity to deal truthfully with the Commission and to comply with our rules and policies, and thus on its basic qualifications to hold a license. 15 F.C.C.R. 2205, at ¶ 54. Thus the Congress could reasonably conclude that other violations of law simply do not reflect as directly upon the offender's qualification to hold an LPFM license. Moreover, insofar as such criminals may seek LPFM (or indeed any type of broadcast) licenses, they are, as the Commission notes, subject to the FCC's [general] character qualification policy, under which they are likely to be disqualified for such serious crimes in any event. See Policy Regarding Character Qualifications in Broad. Licensing, 102 F.C.C.2d 1179, ¶¶ 34-44, 1986 WL 292574 (1986); see also, e.g., In re Contemporary Media, Inc., 12 F.C.C.R. 14254, 1997 WL 473323 (1997) (revocation of license and denial of application for new license because principal had been convicted of sexual abuse of children), aff'd, Contemporary Media, Inc. v. FCC, 214 F.3d 187, 193 (D.C.Cir.2000). Therefore, we can hardly say the Congress was prohibited by the First Amendment from responding to the discrete problem of broadcast piracy — which goes to the heart of the Communications Act, namely, preventing interference caused by unlicensed broadcasting — with a categorical ban. 27 Third, even if it could be thought that categorically disqualifying murderers and the like from getting an LPFM license would deter some unlicensed broadcasting, a regulation is not fatally underinclusive simply because an alternative regulation, which would restrict ... the speech of more people, could be more effective. Blount v. SEC, 61 F.3d 938, 946 (D.C.Cir.1995) (emphasis in original). In sum, we agree with the Commission's position that the character qualification provision of the RBPA is not underinclusive but is, rather, because it targets those who have already violated the broadcast license requirement, reasonably tailored to further the Government's substantial interest in minimizing unlicensed LPFM broadcasting. 28 We reject also Ruggiero's claim that the character qualification is overinclusive because it prohibits all pirates, including those good pirates who stopped broadcasting illegally when ordered to do so, and those former pirates [who] subsequently have become model citizens, from obtaining a license. All unlicensed LPFM broadcasters violated the Communications Act. Any unlicensed broadcasting demonstrates a willful disregard of the most basic rule of federal broadcasting regulation. See H.R.Rep. No. 106-567, at 8 (2000); Creation of Low Power Radio Service, 15 F.C.C.R. 19208, ¶ 96, 2000 WL 1434686 (2000) (Opinion and Order). The Congress did not hit wide of the mark, therefore, when it treated all pirates alike.