The woman many television viewers recognize as “Judge Jeanine” has submitted a Motion to Strike with the D.C. District Court that again asks the judicial body to dismiss the American Broadcasting Companies (ABC) “First Amendment retaliation claim” against the FCC. As previously argued, U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro stated, the Walt Disney Co. unit’s argument “fails because the impetus for the early
renewal processing of Plaintiffs’ broadcast licenses was the need for more information to support the Commission’s antidiscrimination investigation.”
Thus, she said, the Commission’s interests in pursuing its investigation “are not pretextual.”
With words that are critical of the action from the governing branch of Disney that oversees the eight ABC Owned Stations properties under FCC jurisdiction, Pirro added that the plaintiffs are “apparently nervous about whether [their] initial affidavits suffice,” now have
introduced new evidence to establish their likelihood of success on the merits.
That’s because, Pirro stated, a preliminary injunction requires the inclusion of all of its evidence. And, it is based on “Local Rule 65.1(c),” to which Pirro said, “Put simply, Local Rule 65.1(c) forecloses litigation by ambush and guarantees the parties have an equal opportunity to develop the record and respond to each other’s arguments, thus allowing the Court to fully benefit from the adversarial process. Plaintiffs attempt to bypass that process here by introducing new factual evidence after the parties have completed briefing.”
Pirro added that ABC legal counsel at Wilkinson Stekloff “simply attached a new declaration and ten additional exhibits, which they then liberally cited in their reply.”
The Motion to Strike, submitted to the court on September 24, came alongside a separately filed document of further support a Motion to Dismiss the ABC lawsuit.
RBR+TVBR MEMBER BENEFIT: View the further support of a Motion to Strike filed by Judge Pirro here.
In that filing, Pirro argued that the Communications Act already protects Plaintiffs against the “here-and-now” chilling effects on speech that they claim to be suffering, stating, “Under Section 307(c)(3) of the Act, any license under review ‘shall continue . . . in effect’ until the completion of ‘any administrative or judicial hearing and final decision’ on a licensee’s renewal application, including judicial review
under ‘[S]ection 402.'”
As such, she concluded, “Particularly where Congress has provided this guardrail, the Court should not endorse a new path to judicial review that would allow litigants in virtually any case to circumvent Congress’s intent to channel claims against the FCC to the courts
of appeals.”
Perhaps more notable in the further support of the government’s Motion to Dismiss is the belief that the district court lacks jurisdiction. How so? Pirro turns to Thunder Basin Coal Co. v Reich, a 1994 Supreme Court decision that determined when individuals must use an agency’s internal review process rather than filing a federal lawsuit.
