Court Opinion

ID: 9493930
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 15:23:36.216577+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:56:06.772802
License: Public Domain

OAKES, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
I heartily concur in the conclusion of Judge Carnes’s opinion, though I come to it by a somewhat different route. I, by no means, intend to diminish either his interpretation of the Eleventh Circuit precedents, supported by what some of the Justices on the Supreme Court have said from time to time, or his ultimate definition of the terms “any” and “termination” as including voluntary as well as involuntary terminations in the context in which they appeal*. But I would add that the legislative purpose of Satellite Home Viewer Improvement Act (“SHVIA”) provides an alternative basis for the result in this case.
While I have serious reservations about using legislative history to support judicial reasoning, especially because so much of the “history” in recent years has been manufactured to suit the purposes of Congress, I start with Judge Learned Hand’s premise that “it is one of the surest indexes of a mature and developed jurisprudence not to make a fortress out of the dictionary; but to remember that statutes always have some purpose or object to accomplish whose sympathetic and imaginative discovery is the surest guide to their meaning.” Cabell v. Markham, 148 F.2d 737, 739 (2d Cir.1945). As Chief Justice Marshall said while discussing the Commerce Clause in Gibbons v. Ogden, 22 U.S. (9 Wheat.) 1, 189, 6 L.Ed. 23 (1824), “[w]e know of no rule for construing the extent of such powers, other than as given by the language of the instrument which confers them, taken in connection with the purpose for which they were conferred.” (emphasis supplied).
Thus, “there is no surer way to misread any document than to read it literally.” L. Hand, J., concurring in Guiseppi v. Walling, 144 F.2d 608, 623-24 (2d Cir.1944), quoted in Archibald Cox, Judge Learned Hand and the Interpretation of Statutes, *123160 Harv. L.Rev. 370, 375-76 (1947). While it may be true that “whatever the consequences, we must accept the plain meaning of plain words,” United States v. Brown, 206 U.S. 240, 244, 27 S.Ct. 620, 51 L.Ed. 1046 (1907) (Holmes, J.), we should be able to say, after having looked at the purpose of a statute to understand the context in which the words are spoken, “if this be the literal construction of the sentence, it is still more apparently its real meaning.” Schooner Paulina’s Cargo v. United States, 11 U.S. (7 Cranch.) 52, 64, 3 L.Ed. 266 (1812) (Marshall, C.J.).
Happily, in this case, Judge Carnes’s view of the literal meaning of the words here involved is, when viewed within the purpose and context of SHVIA, “still more apparently [their] real meaning.”
I agree with appellant that SHVIA did not merely respond to court-ordered cutoffs, such as those imposed by the district court in this case, but also sought to ensure access to satellite broadcasts, in particular for rural owners of C-Band dishes.
SHVIA, as I read it, was a full review and restructuring of the satellite transmissions statutes designed to benefit consumers and to ensure the viability of the satellite industry as well as to recognize developments in technology which had made the use of rooftop antennas in many ways obsolete. As Senator Leahy remarked in the Congressional Record of August 5, 1999, “I want to make sure that Vermonters will be offered the full range of TV services of satellite once we can negotiate the final bill ... I am in the same situation as many Vermonters. At my home in Middlesex, Vermont, I only receive one local network channel clearly with my rooftop antenna.” 145 Cong.Rec. S10357-02. The bill, sponsored by Senator Leahy -without objection, failed to pass because a Conference with the House could not be set up.
Fellow Senators supporting the bill included not only Senator Hatch, Senator McCain, the ranking member of the Antitrust Subcommittee, and Senator Lott, the Majority Leader of the Senate, but also Senator Kohl. The latter had spoken about the Leahy bill, observing that the Act “g[a]ve satellite carriers the ability to provide local television broadcast signals (while appropriately phasing in must-carry), reduce[d] the royalty fees for those signals, g[a]ve the FCC time to take a much-needed second look at the definition of ‘unserved households,’ and ma[d]e sure no one — no one — is terminated before February 28th of next year.” 144 Cong. Rec. SI0525 (September 17,1998).
When the House passed H.R. 1554, the bill which actually became SHVIA, House Commerce Committee Chairman Bliley of Virginia referred to it as “a better approach. It is a procompetitive solution to the cable’s dominant market share.” 145 Cong.Rec. H2319 (April 27, 1999). And the Conference Report on SHVIA, echoing the theme of satellite competition with the cable industry but also emphasizing the importance of permitting satellite television to provide rural households service, explained:
When Congress passed the Satellite Home Viewer Act in 1988, few Americans were familiar with satellite television. They typically resided in rural areas of the country where the only means of receiving television was through use of a large, backyard C-band satellite dish. Congress' recognized the importance of providing these people with access to broadcast programming, and created a compulsory copyright license in the Satellite Home Viewer Act that enabled satellite carriers to easily license the copyrights to the broadcast programming that they retransmitted to their subscribers.
*1232Conference Report, at 91, reprinted in 145 Cong. Rec. H11792 (Nov. 9,1999).
In 1999, referring to SHVIA in its final form, Senator Leahy reiterated:
[Ujnder current law many families must get their local TV signals over an antenna which often does not provide a clear picture.... While the hills and mountains of Vermont are a natural wonder, they are barriers to receiving clear TV signals over-the-air with roof top antennas.
145 Cong.Rec. S700 (January 19, 1999) (quotations omitted).
I could go on, but the above will suffice to make it clear that SHVIA had not only to do with court-ordered cut-offs, but with the broader purpose of giving rural television owners more up-to-date reception while making satellite providers more competitive with cable television. In context, the literal words of the statute are supportive of its broader purpose, and I therefore am doubly pleased to concur in Judge Carnes’s fine opinion.