Opinion ID: 2506
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Cablevision's First Amendment Challenge

Text: Cablevision argues that compelled carriage of WRNN on Long Island violates the First Amendment on an as-applied basis. Cablevision Br. at 51. We think that the Turner cases do not foreclose the possibility of a successful as-applied First Amendment challenge to the 1992 Cable Act's market modification provisions. In this case, however, Cablevision has failed to demonstrate that the FCC applied the market modification provision unconstitutionally. As a threshold matter, a party alleging violation of its First Amendment rights must show that the challenged government action actually regulates protected speech. Thus, in Turner I, the Court found it necessary to establish, as an initial premise, that [c]able programmers and cable operators engage in and transmit speech, and that the must-carry rules, in general, regulate cable speech. 512 U.S. at 636, 114 S.Ct. 2445. Similarly, Cablevision here must articulate how the FCC's order interferes with [its] speech rights. Time Warner Entm't Co., 240 F.3d at 1129. This threshold requirement serves two interrelated functions. Identifying the burden imposed by government action enables a court to undertake heightened scrutiny analysis: without understanding how a regulation burdens speech, a court cannot decide whether that burden is no greater than is essential to further the goals of the regulation in question. See United States v. O'Brien, 391 U.S. 367, 377, 88 S.Ct. 1673, 20 L.Ed.2d 672 (1968). And the failure to identify the burden has an even more fundamental consequence: without a plausible allegation that the offensive conduct interferes with First Amendment rights or, put differently, that the interaction between government and citizen bring[s] into play the First Amendment, id. at 376, 88 S.Ct. 1673, a reviewing court has neither a reason nor the ability to subject the conduct of the governmental actor to heightened scrutiny. The Turner I and Turner II Courts considered the First Amendment implications of the must-carry provisions taken as a whole, as distinguished from the market modification provisions at issue here, and found that they posed two potential burdens on speech rights: First, the [must-carry] provisions restrain cable operators' editorial discretion in creating programming packages by reducing the number of cable channels over which they exercise unfettered control. Second, the rules render it more difficult for cable programmers to compete for carriage on the limited channels remaining. Turner II, 520 U.S. at 214, 117 S.Ct. 1174 (citation, alterations, and internal quotation marks omitted); accord Turner I, 512 U.S. at 637, 114 S.Ct. 2445. Cablevision raises a similar, but not identical, First Amendment challenge to that raised in Turner I and Turner II. Cablevision presents an as-applied First Amendment challenge to the FCC's order modifying the market of WRNN, pursuant to the provision of the must-carry statute on market determinations, 47 U.S.C. § 534(h)(1)(C)(ii). The challenged order threatens the First Amendment interest of Cablevision in a similar manner to that described in Turner I and Turner II. The order reduces the number of channels over which Cablevision exercises editorial control by forcing it to carry WRNN, see Turner II, 520 U.S. at 213, 117 S.Ct. 1174, and it also makes it more difficult for the cable programming arm of Cablevision to compete for carriage on the remaining channels, id. In order to apply the appropriate level of scrutiny, we must first determine whether the order is content based or content neutral. Turner I, 512 U.S. at 642, 114 S.Ct. 2445. In Turner I, the Court concluded that the burdens imposed on cable operators as well as the benefits conferred on broadcast channels were content neutral. See id. at 643-44, 114 S.Ct. 2445 (Although the provisions interfere with cable operators' editorial discretion by compelling them to offer carriage to a certain minimum number of broadcast stations, the extent of the interference does not depend upon the content of the cable operators' programming. The rules impose obligations upon all operators, save those with fewer than 300 subscribers, regardless of the programs or stations they now offer or have offered in the past.); id. at 645, 114 S.Ct. 2445 (noting that the selection of broadcast channels that must be carried on the cable systems was also unrelated to content). The Turner I Court explicitly rejected the argument that the must-carry regulations are content based because Congress' purpose in enacting them was to promote speech of a favored content. Id. at 646, 114 S.Ct. 2445. Indeed, as the Court noted, when a cable system is required to make room for a broadcast station, nothing would stop a cable operator from displacing a cable station that provides all local- or education-oriented programming with a broadcaster that provides very little. Id. at 648, 114 S.Ct. 2445. However, separate from the must-carry provisions' general requirements, the Turner I Court expressly declined to decide whether a market modification order motivated by a concern for localism would be content based or content neutral. See id. at 644 n. 6, 114 S.Ct. 2445. The Court suggested that such an order might confer special benefits on the basis of content. Id. However, we think the order before us now is content neutral. WRNN's presumptive DMA would have included Nassau and Suffolk counties. It was Cablevision that first invoked the market modification provision to exclude these counties from WRNN's market. It succeeded based on the FCC's concern, in part, that WRNN lacked a Grade B contour reaching Long Island. When WRNN, after expanding its Grade B contour, returned to the FCC seeking restoration of its presumptive DMA, Cablevision argued that the station had failed to demonstrate that the various factors outlined in the market modification provision, including the local programming factor, weighed in WRNN's favor. The Bureau and the FCC reached different conclusions on this factor, yet both agreed that the totality of circumstances no longer justified excluding Long Island communities from WRNN's presumptive DMA. The FCC considered the amount of local programming provided by WRNN only in this context, i.e., in assessing the continued need to restrict a presumptive market defined solely by geography. Moreover, WRNN's local programming was an inconsequential factor in the FCC's ultimate decision. Additionally, Cablevision has not alleged, much less proven, that the restoration of the Long Island communities to WRNN's market under these circumstances was based on some illicit content-based motive. See id. at 652, 114 S.Ct. 2445. We conclude, therefore, that the order is content neutral and deserving of intermediate scrutiny. We have no trouble in concluding that the order advances important governmental interests unrelated to the suppression of free speech and does not burden substantially more speech than necessary to further these interests. Turner II, 520 U.S. at 189, 117 S.Ct. 1174 (citing O'Brien, 391 U.S. at 377, 88 S.Ct. 1673). The burden imposed by the orderthe loss of control over one channelis no greater than necessary to further the government's interest in preserving a single broadcast channel it found serves the local community. In sum, we conclude that the application of the market modification provision in this case does not violate the First Amendment. While we cannot rule out the possibility that the FCC's order might interfere with speech rights in other ways, Cablevision has presented neither factual support nor even a theory of any such additional infringement.