Court Opinion

ID: 9480427
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 07:47:47.734197+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:47:41.123594
License: Public Domain

STEPHEN F. WILLIAMS, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
Though 47 CFR § 73.3571(j) requires a new file number to be assigned “when [an application] is amended ” with certain major changes, it nowhere defines what constitutes “amend[ment]” for these purposes. This case turns not on the literal terms of rule 73.3571(j), but on what procedure the Commission may follow in processing major amendments. Can the Commission refuse to accept a major amendment, or even retroactively withdraw acceptance of such an amendment, so as to give the would-be amending party a chance to rethink its decision? So long as an application is not finally modified by a major amendment without receiving a new file number, nothing in rule 73.3571(j) precludes such a forgiving amendment procedure, and so this court is bound to accept the Commission’s interpretation if it has been adequately explained. See United States v. Larionoff, 431 U.S. 864, 873, 97 S.Ct. 2150, 2156, 53 L.Ed.2d 48 (1977) (court must accept an agency’s interpretation unless “plainly inconsistent with the wording of the regulations”).
The question before this court then (on which the majority properly focuses) is whether the Commission’s actions below were consistent with its past precedent, or to the extent inconsistent, adequately reasoned and explained. The difficulty is that the Commission’s precedent was evolving during the time these amendments were filed and the Commission never explained its actions. The Commission’s only explanation below was in its 1984 Hearing Des*476ignation Order. See Arby R. Beardslee, 49 Fed.Reg. 9262, ¶¶ 8-11 at 9263-64 (FCC 1984). At that time, the crucial precedent needed to justify the Commission’s action, Golden Shores Broadcasting, Inc., 2 FCC Rcd 4743 (1987), had not yet been decided, and the Commission failed to articulate the reasons for its action. By 1989, when the Commission's final order was issued in this case, it could have relied on Golden Shores, but it ignored the entire issue.
On remand the Commission will have the opportunity to justify its actions on its precedent as it existed in 1989 and on any further evolution of the precedent that it reasonably explains. If the Commission relies on Golden Shores, the case may well turn on whether there is any real gulf between (1) the Commission’s refusing to process a suicidal amendment and then ruling on applications as they stand, which is clearly allowed by Golden Shores and prior Commission precedents, and (2) the Commission’s refusing to process a suicidal amendment (that of July 1983) and then allowing time for Heritage to straighten out one aspect of its December 1982 amendment which might also have been suicidal. (As the Commission never made a final finding on the interference problems of the December amendment, it need not be presumed to be a suicidal amendment.) At this point the two seem close enough that the path along Golden Shores may lead handily to the second. The Commission could also invoke new policy reasons to modify, extend or reconsider Golden Shores.