Court Opinion

ID: 9690962
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 19:54:14.418782+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:19:07.279655
License: Public Domain

BRIGHT, District Judge
(dissenting).
As I read the opinion of my brothers, they would dismiss for want of jurisdiction because nothing reviewable has been done, and that even after a license is denied, the only review thereof would be by appeal to the Court of Appeals in the District of Columbia.
By Section 402(a) of the Communications Act of 1934, we have jurisdiction to enjoin, set aside, annul or suspend an order of the Commission, except where it grants or refuses an application for a construction permit, for the granting, renewal or modification of a station license, or suspending a radio operator’s license. These excepted matters can be reviewed only by appeal to the Court of Appeals aforesaid. This order, in my opinion, does not come within any of the excepted provisions. No application has been or is here made for any such relief, *695and the order sought to he reviewed does not arise out of any such application.
There is no question in my mind that the order sought to be reviewed is one which, under the terms of Section'402(a), we have jurisdiction to enjoin. It is designated by the defendants as a “commission order”. It has the usual mandatory clauses found in orders. It was by its terms obviously entered after an investigation made upon the Commission’s own motion to determine what special regulations applicable to radio stations engaged in chain or other broadcasting are required in the public interest, convenience or necessity. It promulgates certain regulations, an obvious and attempted exercise of the Commission’s rule-making power. It is clearly an attempt to make rules because at the time there was nothing else before the Commission upon which it could or did act. All of these rules, or regulations as they are called in the order, relate only to standard broadcasting stations having contracts with a net work organization, except rule 3.106, which relates to a license to be granted to a net work organization having more than one station in a service area, and rule 3.107 which proscribes a broadcasting station affiliated with a net work maintaining more than one net work. These rules do not apply to stations not affiliated with any net work. They apply only to contractual relations with net works, and in addition, prohibit the ownership by a net work of more than one station in a specified service area and the ownership by any organization of more than one net work. The order fixes as immediately the time when it shall become effective. In other respects it has all the earmarks of a final order.
That it was intended to be final is further evidenced by the Commission’s report. It finds that the public interest “requires” the application of the regulations to stations affiliated with regional as well as with national net works. It affirms its powers to do so under Section 303(i) of the Communications Act, and clearly reveals that it is exercising its rule-making power when it queries whether the Commission can formulate into “general rules and regulations” the principles which it intends to apply in passing on individual applications. That its action is final is further emphasized by the statement, “We believe that the announcement of the principles we intend to apply in exercising our licensing power will expedite business and further the ends of justice. * * * The regulations we are now adopting are nothing more than the expression of the general policy we will apply in exercising our licensing power. The formulation of a regulation in general terms is an important aid to consistency and predictability and does not prejudice any rights of the applicant.”
That it is exercising this rule-making power is further emphasized by another statement in its report, that Section 303 (i) gives the Commission specific power to make special regulations applying to radio stations engaged in chain broadcasting and that “no language could more clearly cover what we are doing here.”
What it has done emphasizes more the finality of its order, which is an affirmative direction that thereafter no standard broadcasting station shall contract in terms prohibited, and ultimately puts an end to service by net works under contracts now existing. In fact, I think that the regulations are intended to affect existing contracts for the effective date of the order is deferred until November 15th 1941 “with respect to existing contracts, arrangements or understandings”. This certainly is not a statement that the regulations shall not apply to existing contracts; it is merely a postponement as to when the axe will fall.
The particular agreements prohibited are presently contained in most of the affiliation contracts of the two complaining net works. They state those provisions are essential to the proper and successful conduct of their business, and in deciding the question of jurisdiction, I believe we must assume this to be true. It is also shown by them, without contradiction, that between the time the regulations were promulgated and the commencement of these actions, not less than twenty-four broadcasting stations having affiliation contracts with N.B.C. have cancelled their contracts as a result of the order in question, and not less than twenty-four others having such contracts, have served notice that they do not intend to abide by the terms of such contracts unless they are conformed to the Commission’s order. Similarly, it is shown by the affidavits submitted by C.B.S. that some of the stations affiliated with it are refusing to renew their affiliation contracts, some are threatening to cancel or repudiate them, and some have already cancelled on the ground that the rules in question prohibit them. There is thus a present injury.
It is suggested that the plaintiffs must wait until the Commission has ruled upon *696the application of a broadcasting station for a renewal of its license. Can it be said that the Commission will change its rules, in view of the positive statement it has already made with reference thereto and above quoted? Must these net works await the idle ceremony of a denial of a license before any relief can be sought when it is perfectly obvious that no relief will be given? And what relief could they ger if they did wait? The net works are not to be licensed, only the individual stations who make application. But it is said the net works could intervene and be heard. All that might be said or urged in their behalf has doubtless been communicated to the Commission in the three years between March 18, 1938 and May 2, 1941, when the investigation was going on. Must they march up the hill and down again, with the probability of being met with the statement that the Commission has given the matter due consideration and has done what it intends to abide by, as it has definitely said in its report ? It is said, however, that by a minute adopted after these actions were brought, the Commission has manifested its intention to permit the net works to intervene and be heard upon the subject of the granting or denial of the license. That minute refers obviously only to a station, and insofar as it attempts to change the nature of the order sought to be reviewed or to obviate a review would be abortive. Southern Pacific Co. v. Interstate Commerce Commission, 219 U.S. 433-452, 31 S.Ct. 288, 55 L.Ed. 283; Southern Pacific Terminal Co. v. Interstate Commerce Commission, 219 U.S. 498-515, 31 S.Ct. 279, 55 L.Ed. 310.
This court has reviewed the rule-making power of this very Commission without being troubled by the question of jurisdiction. American T. & T. Co. v. United States, D.C., 14 F.Supp. 121, affirmed 299 U.S. 232, 57 S.Ct. 170, 81 L.Ed. 142 That there can be a review of an order exercising the delegated legislative function of rate-making and rule-making is admitted in United States v. Los Angeles & S. L. R. R., 273 U.S. 299, 309, 47 S.Ct. 413, 71 L.Ed. 651. In Interstate Commerce Commission v. Goodrich Transit Co., 224 U.S. 194, 32 S.Ct. 436, 56 L.Ed. 729, where bills were filed to enjoin orders prescribing methods of account, bookkeeping and reports, jurisdiction was not questioned in a court always jealous of its jurisdiction. In Kansas City Southern Railway v. United States, 231 U.S. 423, 34 S.Ct. 125, 58 L.Ed. 296, 52 L.R.A.,N.S., 1, jurisdiction was again assumed of a petition to declare invalid and to enjoin regulations relative to accounting. In Skinner & Eddy Corp. v. United States, 249 U.S. 557— 562, 39 S.Ct. 375, 63 L.Ed. 772, which involved a refusal of a suspension of a tariff, jurisdiction was assailed, at least until after a further remedy was sought; and it was there stated that where contention was made that the Commission had exceeded its statutory powers, courts have jurisdiction of suits to enjoin even if the plaintiff had not attempted to secure redress before the Commission. In the Assigned Car Cases, 274 U.S. 564, 47 S.Ct. 727, 71 L.Ed. 1204, suits were brought to enjoin and annul an order which prescribed a rule governing the distribution of cars among coal mines after an investigation by the Interstate Commerce Commission of its own motion, and no question of right of review was raised. And in American Federation of Labor v. National Labor Relations Board, 308 U.S. 401, 408, 60 S.Ct. 300, 84 L.Ed. 347, it was admitted that administrative determinations which are not commands may for all practical purposes, determine rights as effectively as the judgment of a court and may be reexamined by courts under particular statutes providing for the review of orders. In Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 U.S. 510, 45 S.Ct. 571, 69 L.Ed. 1070, 39 A.L.R. 468, suit was brought by a private school to restrain the enforcement of an Oregon statute which required primary education in public schools, and jurisdiction was sustained, Mr. Justice McReynolds writing that the suits were not premature, that the injury to the plaintiffs was present and very real and not a mere possibility in the remote future.
Supplemental Opinion.
PER CURIAM.
The Commission is of course right in saying that we have decided that the plaintiffs have adequate protection outside of these actions and in spite of their dismissal; nevertheless, in deciding whether a stay should be granted pending an appeal, we must assume that we may be mistaken, certainly a not unreasonable assumption in view of Judge BRIGHT’S dissent. If so, the plaintiffs will not be adequately protected, and indeed they may not be anyway if the Commission does not withhold enforcement in all cases until the issues could be once and for all determined in a *697renewal proceeding. Considering on the one hand that if the regulations are enforced the networks will be obliged to revise their whole plan of operations to their great disadvantage, and on the other that the Commission itself gave no evidence before these actions were commenced that the proposed changes were of such immediately pressing importance that a further delay of two months will be a serious injury to the public, it seems to us that we should use our discretion in the plaintiffs’ favor to stay enforcement of the regulations until they can argue their appeal. For these reasons we will grant such a stay until the argument of the appeal before the Supreme Court or the first day of May, 1942, whichever comes first. For any further stay the plaintiffs must apply to the Supreme Court itself, or to the Circuit Justice.