Renewal applications for eight of its owned television stations were submitted Thursday by Disney $DIS -0.43%'s ABC, accompanied by a declaration that the filings were made "under protest in response to an unlawful, arbitrary, and unconstitutional order" from the Federal Communications Commission.
The filings came one month after the FCC ordered ABC to submit early renewal applications for all eight stations — years ahead of their scheduled expiration dates. Under their original schedules, the eight stations' licenses would not have required renewal action before 2028, and several were not slated to lapse until 2031, according to CNBC. ABC's objection letter pointed to the rarity of what the FCC was asking: the agency had not issued an early renewal demand of this kind in more than 50 years, the network said, and had no precedent for ordering all stations affiliated with a single network owner to refile at the same time.
The network contended in its filings that the early-renewal order had no legitimate grounding in the agency's DEI probe and ran afoul of the First Amendment. "The order has no legitimate purpose," ABC wrote, adding that it was "plainly incompatible with the First Amendment." Charging the FCC with "unconstitutional retaliation and coercion," ABC said the agency's real aim was clear from the order itself: "to suppress speech — to ramp up toward possible license revocation and cause the Station and others to think twice before they say something the government might dislike."
