ABC stations call FCC's early call for license renewal 'unconstitutional'

Federal Communication Commission (FCC) chairman Brendan Carr speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Dallas, March 27, 2026. (AP Photo/Gabriela Passos, File)

WASHINGTON — Local TV stations owned by ABC across the United States blasted the Federal Communications Commission on Thursday for launching an “unlawful, arbitrary and unconstitutional” early review of their broadcast licenses as a dispute between the network and the Trump-controlled agency intensifies.

“It is an extraordinary demonstration of power and coercion directed at disfavored editorial voices which sends a clear warning to every broadcaster in America,” WABC in New York wrote in an objection that accompanied paperwork filed to comply with the FCC’s demand for early applications to renew licenses.

ABC-owned stations in seven other markets filed similar objections. In a statement, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said “broadcast licensees have a unique obligation to operate in the public interest.”

The reviews are part of a mounting confrontation between the FCC and one of America’s most prominent broadcast networks. Under Carr, an ally of President Donald Trump, the agency has launched probes of ABC touching on everything from its diversity practices to the network’s moderation of a 2024 presidential debate to guests booked on “The View.” Trump has also repeatedly called for late-night host Jimmy Kimmel to be fired.

But the FCC’s move in April to begin early reviews of the broadcast licenses of ABC-owned stations in eight local markets attracted particularly close attention. The licenses for stations in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Houston, New York, Chicago and Philadelphia as well as Fresno, California, and Durham, North Carolina, were initially slated to come up for renewal between 2028 and 2031.

In his statement, Carr reiterated the agency’s focus on Disney’s diversity practices and said the company filed its renewal application “after the FCC informed the company that their responses to the agency’s investigation had been disingenuous, deficient, and improper.”

Commissioner Anna Gomez, the FCC’s sole Democrat, has called the reviews an “egregious assault on the First Amendment.” She has encouraged major media companies to take a stronger stand against the agency, predicting they would prevail in court if a case made it that far.

On Thursday, Gomez said she was glad to see the stations “expose the FCC’s actions as nothing more than naked political retribution and an unlawful assault on free speech and a free press.”

WABC said the “ultimate injury here is not to the station or its parent company.”

“It is to the public,” the station said. “When a broadcaster must weigh regulatory retaliation before making editorial decisions, the public loses access to journalism that is free from government influence.”

That reflects a stark shift in ABC’s approach to political scrutiny in Washington. In the weeks before Trump returned to the White House, the network paid a controversial US$15 million defamation settlement, a move that did little to quell criticism from Trump and his allies in the coming years.

The network mounted a more robust defense of free speech in a filing last month responding to an FCC review of whether “The View” was subject to equal time rules. The agency argued that the law encouraged more speech but ABC warned that open political discussion was being chilled by the Trump administration.

“The Commission’s actions threaten to upend decades of settled law and practice and chill critical protected speech, both with respect to The View and more broadly,” according to a filing on behalf of both KTRK-TV and ABC.

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Associated Press writer Jocelyn Noveck in New York contributed to this report.

Steven Sloan, The Associated Press