Inc. v. Federal Communications Commission Metro Broadcasting - Further Readings

Petitioner
Metro Broadcasting, Inc.
Respondent
Federal Communications Commission
Petitioner's Claim
That federal programs designed to increase minority ownership of broadcast licenses violate the principle of equal protection.
Chief Lawyer for Petitioner
Gregory H. Guillot
Chief Lawyer for Respondent
Daniel M. Armstrong
Justices for the Court
Harry A. Blackmun, William J. Brennan, Jr. (writing for the Court), ThurgoodMarshall, John Paul Stevens, Byron R. White
Justices Dissenting
Anthony M. Kennedy, Sandra Day O'Connor, William H. Rehnquist, Antonin Scalia
Place
Washington, D.C.
Date of Decision
27 June 1990
Decision
The Supreme Court upheld Congress's power to enact legislation promoting affirmative action.
Significance
In Metro Broadcasting, the Supreme Court for the first time endorsed afederal program intended to promote future minority diversification, ratherthan merely remedy past racial discrimination.
In 1978, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) adopted its Statementof Policy on Minority Ownership of Broadcasting Facilities. The statement outlined two FCC policies intended to expand minority ownership of broadcast licenses. First, in judging competing license applications, the FCC gave special considerations to those radio or television stations owned or managed by members of minority groups. Second, the FCC permitted a broadcaster who wasin danger of losing its license to transfer that license through a so-called"distress sale," but only to a radio or television broadcast organization controlled by members of minority groups. Otherwise, the distressed license holder was obliged to allow the courts to decide who could have the license.
Metro Broadcasting was one of several applicants for a license to operate a new television station in Orlando, Florida. An administrative law judge approved Metro's application. When the FCC reviewed this award, however, it determined that the license should go to one of Metro's competitors, a firm that was90 percent Hispanic owned. (Metro had only one minority partner who owned 19.8 percent of the company.) Metro appealed this decision to the U.S. Court ofAppeals for the District of Columbia. When the court upheld the FCC's decision, Metro took its case to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Supreme Court Upholds Affirmative Action in Broadcasting
In the Supreme Court, Metro challenged the notion that FCC programs aimed atincreasing minority ownership would further the national goal of promoting programming diversification. Writing for the Court, Justice Brennan declared that it did. In approving the FCC's policies:

Congress found that "the effects of past inequities stemming from racial and ethnic discriminationhave resulted in a severe underrepresentation of minorities in the media of mass communications." . . . Congress and the Commission do not justify the minority ownership policies strictly as remedies for victims of this discrimination, however. Rather, Congress and the FCC have selected the minority ownership policies primarily to promote programming diversity, and they urge that such diversity is an important governmental objective that can serve as a constitutional basis for the preference policies. We agree.

The FCC adopted the programs at issue specifically in response to a federal law requiring it to promote diversification in programming. Then Congress approved the programs as a valid method of achieving what it considered an important national goal. Whereas in other situations the Court looked with disfavoron statutes that created suspect categories of individuals based on race, here it was prepared to waive the strict scrutiny test. This test required thatgovernment use the least disruptive method of advancing a compelling state interest. But in Metro Broadcasting, there was a substantial relationship between goals and methods, and that was enough to satisfy five members ofthe Court.
In an important earlier case concerning affirmative action, Fullilove v. Klutznick (1980), the majority gave great weight to the fact that the programs at issue in Metro Broadcasting originated with federal legislation. In 1989, the Court had applied strict scrutiny in Richmond v. J. A. Croson Co. to defeat a state affirmative action plan on equal protection grounds. A majority of the Croson Court distinguished its decision from the decision in Fullilove by granting the federal government greater latitude than state governments in enforcing the equal protection mandate of the Fourteenth Amendment. Metro Broadcasting, with its emphasis on change rather than compensation, marked a turning point in American social history. With this decision, the Court was, for the first time, giving the federal government more authority than the states had to fashion specific policies foraddressing the inequities born of America's racist past.
Related Cases

• Fullilove v. Klutznick, 448 U.S. 448 (1980).
  
• Wygant v. Jackson Board of Education, 476 U.S. 267 (1986).
  
• Johnson v. Transportation Agency, 480 U.S. 646 (1987).
  
• Richmond v. J. A. Croson Co., 488 U.S. 469 (1989).