Lower Court Holding
Decision of the Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals
On February 21, 2006, the FCC issued an order resolving various complaints against several television broadcasts. Through this order, the FCC intended to “provide substantial guidance to broadcasters and the public about the types of programming that are impermissible under our indecency standard. Fox, CBS,and NBC, supported by several amici,raise a variety ofarguments against the validity of the remand order, including: (1) the remandorder is arbitrary andcapricious because the Commission’s regulation of “fleeting expletives represents a dramatic change inagency policy without adequate explanation; (2) the FCC’s “community standards analysisis arbitrary and meaningless; (3) the FCC’s indecency findings are invalid…
