"The Commission's Chairman has repeatedly emphasized that, although the allegations against Disney are serious, he and the agency remain "open-minded," have "not made a decision," and are "going to follow the facts and the law wherever they [lead]." And the renewal process in progress does not abridge or otherwise affect Plaintiffs' rights."
On Thursday, September 3, 2026, the FCC moved to dismiss Disney and ABC's First Amendment suit, No. 1:26-cv-02902-LLA in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, and to deny the network's request for a preliminary injunction. Its lead argument is jurisdictional: Congress channeled review of Commission orders to the courts of appeals under the Hobbs Act and 47 U.S.C. 402, and under TRAC v. FCC those provisions strip district courts of federal-question jurisdiction even where the agency "has not yet issued any final, reviewable order." On the merits it argued that a retaliation theory requires but-for animus, and that the early renewal review arose from an employment-discrimination investigation opened in early 2025, with Disney notified March 27, 2025 — not from Carr's comments about Jimmy Kimmel or "The View." On harm, the filing states that plaintiffs "have shown (at most) minimal and self-inflicted effects on speech, and no harms that could justify a preliminary injunction," and notes that the stations may keep operating throughout the proceeding and even if their applications were denied. The Media Bureau ordered the early renewals on April 28, 2026, for eight ABC-owned stations whose licenses were not otherwise due for renewal until between 2028 and 2031; the FCC had not ordered an early review in more than fifty years. The stations filed on May 28 under protest. Asked at an April 30 press conference whether Kimmel's joke would factor into the review, Carr said Disney is "going to have to come in and demonstrate" its compliance. Judge Loren AliKhan set a hearing for October 6, 2026, and the FCC agreed to give at least 48 hours' notice before referring the licenses to a public hearing. Four days before the filing, the president had publicly asked Carr's commission to punish NBC's Kristen Welker by name; Carr did not respond to a request for comment on that post.
Filed it as procedure. "FCC asks court to toss Disney lawsuit" was the headline, the Hobbs Act argument got a paragraph, Carr's Kimmel remarks got the standard recap, and the October 6 hearing date closed the story. Two things in the document went unquoted almost everywhere. The agency told a federal judge that a broadcaster's chilling effect was "self-inflicted" — the government's formal position on a First Amendment injury is that the network did it to itself. And the agency's proof that it harbors no animus is a quotation of its own chairman's public assurances, which is the argument the suit exists to test. Nobody set the September 3 filing against the August 30 post, four days earlier, in which the president instructed this commission to punish a named anchor at a different network. Both were covered. They were covered as separate stories, which is how a four-day gap disappears.
Entries #36 and #39 tracked the loud half of this instrument — the threat that cannot lawfully be carried out, covered wall to wall, with an expert coda explaining why it is unlawful. This is the quiet half, and it is in writing, signed, on a federal docket. The Commission's position is that a district court may not hear the claim at all until the process it is running has finished running, that no decision has been made, and that whatever the network did in response to license exposure it did to itself. Each of those can be legally sound and still describe a mechanism that never has to be used to work: the exposure is the leverage, the leverage is now defended as harmless, and the timeline for testing it is set by the agency holding the licenses. What the record holds after September 3 is a sworn corporate account of a chilling effect, a government brief calling it self-inflicted, a presidential instruction to punish a journalist by name four days earlier, and a chairman who has said nothing about that instruction while eight licenses sit in early renewal.