A bipartisan coalition of former high-ranking Federal Communications Commission personnel urged the FCC to drop its ongoing early license renewal proceeding against ABC, calling the move “an assault on free speech disguised as regulatory process.”
The FCC in April ordered the Disney-owned ABC to file license renewals for its eight television stations by late May – years ahead of schedule. The order said the commission was investigating the stations “for possible violations of the Communications Act of 1934 and the FCC’s rules, including the agency’s prohibition on unlawful discrimination.”
Disney said in response that it was “confident” its “record demonstrates our continued qualifications as licensees under the Communications Act and the First
Amendment and are prepared to show that through the appropriate legal channels.”
The coalition includes more than a dozen former FCC chairs, commissioners, chiefs of staff, general counsels and bureau chiefs who served under both Democratic and Republican leadership, the July 28 legal filing said.
Among them is former FCC Commissioner Rachelle Chong, a Republican who served under then-President Bill Clinton’s administration in the mid-1990s.
Chong called the FCC’s investigation “an effort to punish ABC and Disney for poorly disguised political reasons” in a July 28 news release. She went on to say the “unusual” nature of the FCC’s allegations and legal review “suggests it is more about a desire to silence speech.”
Chong was also among the petitioners who in November 2025 called for the FCC to repeal its news distortion policy, which FCC Chair Brendan Carr has invoked in threatening broadcast licenses.
ABC launched an on-air campaign in late June asking viewers to submit comments to the FCC in its defense. In a July 6 legal filing, the network accused the FCC of "chilling speech ahead of the fast-approaching 2026 general election."
President Donald Trump, in a July 16 primetime address focused on election security, called for both ABC and NBC’s licenses to be revoked over not broadcasting the speech.
First Amendment experts have previously told USA TODAY that the FCC has limited power to revoke broadcast licenses and doing so over a network’s editorial decision-making would be unconstitutional.
Group accuses FCC chair of 'campaign to punish' disfavored speech
The coalition’s legal filing asked the FCC to drop the license renewal probe and dismiss petitions by the Center for American Rights and the Media Research Center that called for the FCC to deny ABC stations’ renewal applications for three primary reasons.
First, the coalition called the proceeding “an alarming departure from agency practice that denies the stations meaningful due process.”
“There was not one early renewal proceeding in our combined decades on the Commission, and the early license renewal process has not been invoked in more than 50 years,” the filing said.
They went on to say the centers’ petitions call for implementing what they called an unconstitutional “regime of content and viewpoint regulation" that allows the FCC to “interfere with the stations’ First Amendment-protected editorial discretion: word choices, fact-checks, time covering certain topics, personnel and the licensees’ perceived viewpoints.”
The filing also said the proceeding should be assessed in the context of what it called Carr’s “campaign to punish speech disfavored by the Trump administration.”
Earlier in the year, Carr threatened broadcast licenses over networks’ Iran war coverage.
“The law is clear,” Carr wrote in a March 14 X post. “Broadcasters must operate in the public interest, and they will lose their licenses if they do not.”
FCC also investigating ABC over equal time rules
Protect Democracy, a nonprofit “dedicated to defeating the authoritarian threat,” and the nonpartisan technology think tank TechFreedom, are representing the former FCC personnel.
"Carrʼs actions at the FCC are part of a coordinated attempt by the Trump administration to control the political narrative ahead of the 2026 midterms,” Protect Democracy counsel Conor Gaffney said in the groups’ July 28 news release. “When a regulatory agency uses its licensing authority to punish free speech, it isn't regulating – it is censoring what Americans are allowed to hear."
TechFreedom President Berin Szóka said the license renewal process “exists to determine whether broadcasters meet their legal obligations – not whether politicians approve of their programming.”
“Once license renewal becomes a means of pressuring editorial decisions, every broadcaster has reason to wonder whether critical reporting could jeopardize its ability to stay on the air,” he said.
The FCC has another ongoing proceeding against ABC related to the commission’s equal time rules.
Carr characterized it as a procedural matter at the commission’s March open meeting, saying ABC hadn’t submitted the proper paperwork declaring an appearance by a political candidate that would open the window for an opposing candidate to request “comparable time and placement.”
Commissioner Anna Gomez, whom former President Joe Biden appointed in 2023, has rejected that notion, saying in the March meeting that the FCC “is using the equal time rule as a way to harass broadcasters for content that it disfavors.”
USA TODAY reached out to the FCC and ABC for comment.
BrieAnna Frank is a First Amendment reporter at USA TODAY. Reach her at bjfrank@usatoday.com.
USA TODAY's coverage of First Amendment issues is funded through a collaboration between the Freedom Forum and Journalism Funding Partners. Funders do not provide editorial input.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Former FCC leaders slam agency probe into ABC
