The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C....
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit rejected a challenge by Alpine PCS to an FCC decision to re-auction two licenses the company had bought in a 1996 auction. The FCC took that step after Alpine failed to…
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make timely payments. The D.C. Circuit decided the case without oral argument. The court said it had affirmed the FCC’s decision in 2010, but in January 2013 Alpine filed a breach-of-contract suit against the FCC in a trial court. “The court dismissed the suit for lack of subject matter jurisdiction,” the D.C. Circuit said in its order (http://bit.ly/1rEQ63N). “First, Alpine claims a forum selection clause within the contracts it signed with FCC is controlling because Congress provided a waiver of sovereign immunity in 47 U.S.C. § 309(j). Second, Alpine contends the district court erred in not deferring to FCC’s interpretation of its jurisdiction, as purportedly embodied in that contract clause, in accordance with City of Arlington v. FCC. ... Because each argument is clearly foreclosed by statute and precedent, we affirm the district court’s judgment."