The Walt Disney Company has filed a lawsuit against the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) over the agency’s decision to review ABC’s broadcast television license.
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According to NBC News, the filing was done just months after the FCC ordered Walt Disney’s eight owned-and-operated television stations to file their broadcast license renewals ahead of schedule. The licenses were reportedly not due for renewal until 2028, at the earliest.
However, the White House and President Trump seemingly urged the FCC to conduct the license review after ABC late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel made a joke about First Lady Melania Trump.
All eight of Walt Disney’s owned ABC stations are part of the lawsuit against the FCC.
The House of Mouse notably cited some of Trump’s social media posts in the lawsuit. Among them was one during which he complained that late-night TV hosts “are almost 100% Negative to President Donald J. Trump” and asked if broadcast licenses should “be terminated?”
“Acting through the Federal Communications Commission, the Administration has waged a retaliatory campaign against ABC for a single reason: it disapproves of what ABC broadcast,” the lawsuit reads. “That campaign began in this Administration’s earliest days and has only intensified since.”
Walt Disney Describes FCC’s Review As An ‘Existential Threat’
Meanwhile, Walt Disney’s legal team called FCC broadcast license review an “existential threat.”
“The Commission issued an unprecedented order requiring the Stations to file early applications to renew their licenses—years before any of their licenses would have come up for renewal in the ordinary course and allowing only thirty days to file applications which ordinarily take months to prepare,” the legal team further pointed out.
Through the lawsuit, Walt Disney requested that the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia “immediately” stop the FCC “from taking or threatening to take any action” against it and ABC.
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr already spoke out about the lawsuit, telling NBC News, “It would seem that Disney has become very concerned and worried, and they now are attempting to go to court to get the court to stop the FCC from moving forward, at least with respect to some of the proceedings that are underway.”
He then noted, “But we feel like ultimately that’s going to be a meritless case.”
Carr further pointed out that the FCC has not “made a decision, ultimately, on a license proceeding.” However, he added, “We’ll follow the facts and the law wherever they take us.”