Obama Administration Seeks Review of Indecency Ruling

April 22, 2011 World Screen
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WASHINGTON, D.C.: President Barack Obama’s administration has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review an appeals court ruling last year that tossed out the Federal Communications Commission’s indecency rules on fleeting profanity and nudity in broadcast TV.

In the July 2010 ruling, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit court said that the FCC’s indecency rules were “unconstitutionally vague, creating a chilling effect that goes far beyond the fleeting expletives at issue here.” The decisions related to expletives used on an awards show that aired on FOX and a brief scene with a naked woman on ABC’s NYPD Blue.

The FCC had ruled, in 2004, that “a single, nonliteral use of an expletive” could be classed as indecent—and subject to a $325,000 fine per station. “The fine for a single expletive uttered during a broadcast could easily run into the tens of millions of dollars,” the appeals court noted at the time. 

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Acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal made the case the to the Supreme Court yesterday that the indecency policy should be reinstated. "The court of appeals’ decisions preclude the commission from effectively implementing statutory restrictions on broadcast indecency that the agency has enforced since its creation in 1934," Katyal wrote.