Court Opinion

ID: 9474102
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 04:48:14.081132+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:43:54.462025
License: Public Domain

STARR, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
While concurring in the court’s judgment and opinion, I write separately to emphasize what this case does and does not involve. As the court’s opinion states, the case is about the Commission’s failure to follow past precedent, nothing more, nothing less. What the case does not involve is a challenge to the Commission’s policies and regulations in the area of equal employment opportunity. Compare Steele v. FCC, 770 F.2d 1192 (D.C.Cir.1985); Pappas v. FCC, Nos. 85-1149, 85-1513 (D.C.Cir. petition for review filed Mar. 8, 1985). Indeed, the licensee steadfastly maintains that it has brought itself fully into conformity with the FCC’s requirements and argues that the Commission, in granting a full seven-year period of renewal, faithfully applied its controlling precedent.
From my reading of this record, the fundamental deficiency in the licensee’s discharge of its public trust is its marked failure year after year actively to recruit minorities, particularly blacks and Hispanics, into the applicant pool. There is no evidence, indeed no allegation, that the licensee engaged in any specific act of discrimination over the years. Rather, the licensee’s failure to conform to the recruiting and outreach practices mandated by the Commission was, as I read this record, the direct cause of the dearth — indeed, for a period, a complete absence — of minorities in the licensee’s workforce. Once WYEN at long last undertook a vigorous recruitment effort, the number of minority employees at the station took a significant turn upward.
The sole question before us is whether the Commission adhered to its controlling precedent in relying upon WYEN’s eleventh-hour turnaround. For the reasons well stated for the court by Judge Wald, the answer to that question in this case must be an emphatic no.