Several former Federal Communications Commissioners and staffers throughout events are urging a federal appeals court docket to force a vote on the FCC’s information distortion coverage, which they argue needs to be repealed after being abused by Republican Chair Brendan Carr.
On Tuesday, a group of petitioners requested the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to require the FCC to vote on a petition to repeal the News Distortion Policy. The petition was filed by the bipartisan group of former officials in November of 2025, after Carr invoked the rule to strain ABC into quickly suspending comic Jimmy Kimmel. But solely the company chair can convey it to the full fee for a vote, and Carr has to date failed to accomplish that whereas opposing a repeal. Now, the former officials are asking the court docket to grant a writ of mandamus, which might compel the FCC to take motion. The purpose is to force a response from the company, placing every of the three commissioners on the file about the coverage, and opening a potential authorized pathway to take away a instrument the group believes has been weaponized.
“The News Distortion Policy is a loaded gun that Chairman Carr is using to threaten broadcasters,” Mark Fowler, a Republican who led the company in the ’80s, stated in a assertion. “Until it is repealed, we will not have a free press.” Tom Wheeler, a former Democratic chair from 2013 to 2017, had a comparable warning. “As long as the News Distortion Policy remains, the FCC Chair could continue to misuse it to police perceived media bias, discourage broadcasters from covering controversial stories, and punish outlets that air content the Trump administration dislikes.” The petitioners additionally embody the Radio Television Digital News Association, former Republican FCC chairs Dennis Patrick and Alfred Sikes, Republican commissioners Andrew Barrett and Rachelle Chong, former Democratic commissioner Ervin Duggan, and 4 further former senior leaders at the company.
“The News Distortion Policy is a loaded gun that Chairman Carr is using to threaten broadcasters.”
The News Distortion Policy is a beforehand little-used instrument at the FCC that dates again to 1949 and empowers the company to take enforcement actions against broadcasters that intentionally distort a fact-based report about a main information occasion. Since the FCC solely regulates broadcast TV and radio, it doesn’t apply to cable networks, on-line information shops, or different types of media, and in accordance to the company’s web site, “Expressions of opinion or errors stemming from mistakes are not actionable.” In their petition, the former officials write that sure authorized guardrails on its use had “ensured its sparing and judicious use for several decades.”
But below Carr, the coverage has seen a revival. The chair has threatened repeatedly to use it against broadcasters that he perceives as favoring political opponents or displaying a bias against President Donald Trump — together with CBS, which Trump sued over its edit of a 60 Minutes interview with then-presidential candidate Kamala Harris, and ABC, which broadcast Kimmel making a joke associated to conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s killing. Most just lately, he appeared to threaten the broadcast licenses of stations that aired crucial protection of Trump’s battle in Iran, although he later denied this was intentional. Carr’s invocation of the coverage has drawn criticism even from Republicans like Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), who in contrast Carr to a “mafioso” after his Kimmel menace.
To rule in the petitioners’ favor, the DC circuit court docket would wish to discover that the FCC failed its obligation to act, imposed an egregious delay, and no enough different will treatment the matter. The petition argues that timing is of the essence — with midterm elections approaching, “this abuse of regulatory power to shape voter perception and control information the electorate has access to is a particularly urgent matter.”
If the court docket does order the FCC to take a vote, the petition appears doubtless to fail. Democratic Commissioner Anna Gomez has criticized the News Distortion Policy as “vague and ineffective,” however Carr has shot down the concept of repealing it. Republican Commissioner Olivia Trusty — the third and closing member of the partially staffed FCC — could also be reluctant to break from Carr on such a high-profile matter, and has stated the coverage “reflects a simple principle: a station cannot truly serve its community if it knowingly distorts the news about important events.”
Attorney Andrew Jay Schwartzman, who’s bringing the petition alongside former Biden FCC nominee Gigi Sohn, and advocacy teams Protect Democracy and TechFreedom, acknowledges that the full fee very properly might refuse to repeal the coverage. But taking that step would a minimum of open up a authorized avenue that has to date been blocked. “That would be OK with us, because we can then appeal that denial,” Schwartzman stated in a assertion. “The problem here is that Brendan Carr is sitting on the petition.”
“When unlikely allies share an opinion, that opinion eclipses partisanship and ideology.”
The petitioners consider that a new overview of the coverage ought to overturn it. New Supreme Court opinions on the First Amendment have “called into question whether the Commission’s application of the policy is even constitutional,” the submitting says. That contains SCOTUS’ choice in the NetChoice instances, which handled a pair of state legal guidelines that sought to restrict social media content material moderation, and the place “a plurality of the Supreme Court opined there is no legitimate government interest — and therefore no permissible application under the First Amendment — in ‘correct[ing] the mix of speech’ in order to ‘better balance the speech market.’” in accordance to the former FCC officials’ submitting. “Yet this is precisely the interest that the Chairman, and the Commission he effectively controls, seek to advance with the news distortion policy.”
“When unlikely allies share an opinion, that opinion eclipses partisanship and ideology,” Chong, one in all the former Republican commissioner petitioners, stated in a assertion. “You could not find a group of petitioners with more divergent political beliefs than this one, and yet, we all agree on one thing: The news distortion policy should be repealed.”