Disney, ABC ask court to block FCC's accelerated license review

Review of all eight ABC stations at once is unprecedented, observers say

Walt Disney Co. and ABC asked U.S. District Judge Loren L. AliKhan on Tuesday to block the Federal Communications Commission from accelerating a license-renewal review of all eight ABC-owned television stations, alleging First Amendment violations. AliKhan had compelled the agency to hold off on the review until she held the hearing.

The FCC’s lone Democratic commissioner said Disney “has found its courage” in filing the lawsuit against the agency.

President Trump has repeatedly called for ABC to fire late-night comedian Jimmy Kimmel, who has consistently mocked the president, and has routinely denounced ABC’s “The View,” accusing it of being liberal and unfair. Trump had earlier sued the network, before returning to office, over incorrect statements anchor George Stephanopoulos made about the verdicts in writer E. Jean Carroll’s two lawsuits against Trump. ABC paid $16 million in a December 2024 settlement, including legal fees, to resolve that a month before Trump returned to the White House. New Disney CEO Josh D’Amaro has authorized the high-stakes fight against the administration in court.

Carr, whom Trump elevated to chair the agency, has echoed the president’s complaints about ABC programming. The FCC under Carr moved to review Disney’s ownership of all eight stations it owns as part of the ABC Network years ahead of the normal schedule, following months of social media posts from Trump urging that the FCC strip ABC of its station licenses. The early license-renewal review of the ABC stations followed a joke Kimmel made about the first lady.

Mark Fowler, a Republican who served as FCC chair under President Ronald Reagan, filed a statement to aid ABC’s lawsuit in which he likened Carr’s actions to censorship. “There’s not even a question as to what Carr is doing. What Carr is doing is unconstitutional,” Fowler said. “The First Amendment is very plain in its wording and its meaning.”

Television networks do not require federal licenses to operate, but individual stations do need licenses to use publicly owned airwaves. Stations are reviewed on a staggered basis and are typically renewed without much fanfare. Carr cited the requirement that stations serve the “public interest” and has initiated investigations of Disney and ABC over their diversity, equity and inclusion practices. He has criticized the network as biased, while saying the license review is not linked to ABC’s content.

Media advocates, FCC veterans and legal observers said the move to challenge all of ABC’s local licenses at once is unprecedented. Six of the eight stations are in major media markets and contribute significantly to the network’s bottom line. Bruce Brown, president of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, called FCC overreach “one of the greatest threats right now that’s facing journalism.”

In an August interview with NPR, Carr said the agency has not decided whether to pull the station licenses from ABC. He said ABC is complaining about his drive to take the “public interest” component of the law seriously, and that the network is getting ahead of itself. The agency has not yet taken any action against ABC’s licenses — merely sped up their review. Whether ABC and Disney have standing to sue may consume part of the legal wrangling on Tuesday, as that question will help determine whether the case can proceed.

Conservative groups lined up on opposing sides. The fundraising committees for U.S. Senate and House Republican candidates filed briefs supporting the FCC: “By any commonsense standard, evidence of broadcaster intent to advance the candidacies of Democratic Party figures on The View is not merely present, but overwhelming,” they wrote in a court filing. Several groups often affiliated with conservatives weighed in on ABC’s side, including the Cato Institute, the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the Institute for Policy Innovation.

They pointed to Carr’s record, including his statement on a right-wing podcast in September 2025 that ABC getting rid of Kimmel “can do this the easy way or the hard way.” ABC suspended Kimmel hours later over remarks he made about the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk; it lifted the suspension after a public outcry.

Fellow satirists Seth Meyers of NBC’s “Late Night” and John Oliver of HBO’s “Last Week Tonight” paid tribute to their ABC counterpart during an episode of “Jimmy Kimmel Live” taped last week in Brooklyn. “You come up all the time,” Oliver told Kimmel. “[Fans] will normally say, how does it feel, being disliked by the current president? And we always say, as long as you’re on the air, we’re fine. We are fully behind you — the way we’re fully behind a bulletproof vest.”

The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press filed a friend-of-the-court brief on ABC’s behalf, hiring a former U.S. solicitor general who has argued repeatedly before the U.S. Supreme Court to represent the organization at the district court level.

Brown pointed at a broader pattern of actions by Carr and other Trump appointees, saying the agency has launched investigations into all broadcast networks including NPR (save Fox, which is controlled by the president’s allies, Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch), the administration has cut off access for many journalists at the White House and the Pentagon, federal agents have sought access to journalists’ devices to identify anonymous sources, and the president has sought to delegitimize media outlets whose presentation of the news has sparked public displays of anger. “This is only one part of a wide effort by the Trump administration to intimidate the press — and to try to coerce out of news organizations the type of coverage the president wants to see,” Brown said.