Religious Broadcasters Celebrate Court Win Over FCC Employee Survey.

There is celebration and a collective sigh of relief from religious broadcasters following a ruling by a federal appeals court blocking the Federal Communications Commission from moving forward with its plan to collect data from every radio and television station about their employees. The Fifth Circuit ruled Monday (May 19) that the FCC lacks the legal authority to require broadcasters to submit Form 395-Bs.

Mike Farris, General Counsel at the National Religious Broadcasters, says they are “very encouraged” by what they view a “strong defense” by the Fifth Circuit of broadcasters’ First Amendment rights.

“The prior administration had elevated woke ideology over time-honored principles of freedom of speech and association,” Farris says. “The desire to use the power of government to gather information for no other legitimate governmental purpose but to harm the political opponents of regulated entities is utterly un-American. That threat is now behind us thanks to this decision from the Fifth Circuit.”

As Inside Radio first reported, a three-judge panel in in the conservative-leaning Fifth Circuit concluded that the FCC overstepped its authorities when in Feb. 2024 it voted along party-lines to reinstate the annual Form 395-B filing requirement. The forms would have collected race, ethnicity, and gender data for each station’s employees within specified job categories.

The Commission said the data collection was in the public interest and required under federal. It also claimed the data is “critical” because it will allow for “analysis and understanding of the broadcast industry workforce” and to track the diversity of employees.

But the NRB and the American Family Association went to court, asking the court to block the new rules within months of their adoption. They said the FCC order violated their First and Fifth Amendment rights, in part because the new form would have used a “non-binary” gender option, along with the traditional male and female classifications. Religious broadcasters claimed the inclusion of a non-binary category would force them to recognize genders beyond male and female.

The Fifth Circuit did not take up those issues, however, saying there was no need to get that far. It said the FCC’s claim it is acting in the public interest doesn’t give it unlimited power to gather the information from stations, regardless of whether it includes new gender options. “The FCC has not shown that it is authorized to require broadcasters to file employment-demographics data or to analyze industry employment trends, so it cannot fall back on ‘public interest’ to fill the gap,” Chief Judge Jennifer Walker Elrod wrote in noted in the 19-page decision.

Broadcasters’ objections went beyond religious grounds, and the Texas Association of Broadcasters was also among those that challenged the FCC order (MB Docket No. 98-204) in court. It also accused the FCC of regulatory overreach. TAB President Oscar Rodriguez said Texas broadcasters are immensely pleased with the outcome of this ruling.

“The court’s action permits us to return our focus to super-serving our communities of license,” Rodriguez said. “We will do so in part by continuing to recruit talented professionals from all walks of life who are dedicated to arming communities with the information needed to ensure their safety, advance their understanding of community concerns and fulfill the promise of our democracy.”

FCC Unlikely To Appeal

The FCC is signaling it will not pursue an appeal of the decision either by the full Fifth Circuit or the Supreme Court. Chair Brendan Carr was among those voting against the reinstate of the employee data collections last year. In a lengthy dissent, Carr said the rules would have only resulted in the publication of a “scorecard” for every radio and TV station so that they would be “targeted and pressured” into making decisions based on race and gender. That opinion hasn’t changed.

“As I said in my dissent back then, the FCC’s 2024 decision was an unlawful effort to pressure businesses into discriminating based on race and gender,” Carr said in a social media post Monday.

Two Victories For NRB In One Day

News of the appeals court decision about employee data came when NRB was already in celebration mode. President Troy Miller was among the invited guests to the White House lawn Monday as President Donald Trump signed the Take It Down Act that bans the nonconsensual online publication of sexually explicit images and videos, regardless of whether they are authentic or computer-generated. NRB members had been pushing for the bill to become law.