Prometheus SCOTUS Appeal Distributed for Conference Sept. 29
The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel that has ruled on all four Prometheus cases has “for nearly two decades repeatedly elevated its own policy concerns over the statutory text,” said NAB in a cert petition reply brief filed…
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Wednesday at the U.S. Supreme Court (see 2008060064). The filing is the last before SCOTUS considers whether to grant certiorari to NAB and the FCC’s appeal of the 3rd Circuit's most recent Prometheus ruling, and the case has been distributed for a Sept. 29 conference, according to the SCOTUS website. That means the court should decide by early October whether to take the case, attorneys told us. “Unless this Court grants review now, the Third Circuit’s misguided interpretation” will “continue to distort the FCC’s quadrennial reviews and thwart Congress’s intent,” said NAB. Arguments from the public interest groups in the case that the FCC’s quadrennial review, not SCOTUS, is a more proper venue for disputing ownership rules should be rejected, NAB said. The question isn’t whether the FCC properly interpreted the intent of Congress, it's whether the 3rd Circuit did, NAB said. “There is no authority for respondents’ extraordinary proposition that this Court may not correct a lower appellate court’s interpretation of a statute unless and until an agency ‘grapple[s] with the issue’ first.” said NAB. A grant of cert is “urgently needed now,” NAB said. “Due to the same Third Circuit panel’s repeated decisions, ownership rules from decades ago are frozen in place.”