A federal judge is deciding whether she even has the power to halt what ABC calls a constitutionally impermissible campaign of regulatory retaliation — and the answer to that threshold question may matter more than the First Amendment arguments themselves.

U.S. District Judge Loren AliKhan in Washington heard two hours of argument Tuesday in the lawsuit filed by Disney and ABC against the Federal Communications Commission, as attorneys fought over whether the court can act at all, and over whether the FCC’s accelerated review of eight ABC broadcast licenses was designed to punish constitutionally protected editorial decisions. AliKhan did not issue a ruling from the bench. Instead she directed the Department of Justice to file supplemental briefing by October 9 and gave ABC until October 14 to respond — meaning no order is expected before mid-October at the earliest.

What Happened in Court Tuesday

ABC’s lead attorney, Beth Wilkinson, used a vivid image to open her argument: the FCC’s accelerated review has placed the network’s head on a “guillotine,” she told the federal court, leaving ABC’s journalists and producers to wonder with every editorial decision “if anything we say is going to make it come down.”

Wilkinson was direct about the harm she said was already occurring. “Our editorial decisions are being affected right now,” she said, adding that proximity to the 2026 midterm elections made the ongoing pressure urgent. “We are watching everything that we do.” The lawsuit’s underlying complaint documented two specific examples: ABC News chose not to carry Trump’s July prime-time address containing unverified election claims — an editorial decision the network says provoked regulatory retaliation — and The View halted its practice of inviting political candidates for interviews, both changes the network attributes directly to fear of FCC regulatory consequences.

The government’s representative, DOJ attorney Dimitar Georgiev-Remmel, rejected the “guillotine” framing, contending that all eight broadcast licenses remain valid and that ABC had suffered no irreparable harm that would justify the extraordinary remedy of a preliminary injunction. Granting such an injunction, he argued, would allow ABC to “sidestep” the congressional process Congress specifically established for reviewing FCC licensing decisions.

What Jurisdiction Actually Means for ABC

Beneath the First Amendment arguments lies a structural question that may decide the case before any judge ever reaches the merits: where does this lawsuit belong?

The government argues that challenges to FCC licensing actions do not belong in district court. Under the Administrative Orders Review Act — commonly called the Hobbs Act — along with Section 402 of the Communications Act of 1934, parties challenging FCC orders are generally required to exhaust administrative remedies by seeking review before the full commission, then appealing to a federal court of appeals rather than a district court. In practice, that means routing this case through the D.C. Circuit — a process that could take months or years while the FCC’s early license review continues without any court-imposed restraint.

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr signaled this argument weeks before the hearing. “Under the Communications Act, that challenge would first go to the full commission through an application for review, with any appeal governed by Hobbs Act procedures in a federal court of appeals rather than a district court,” Carr said in late September.

ABC’s lawyers countered that this procedural route, precisely because it takes so long, IS the constitutional injury. Waiting for an appeals court while the review proceeds — and while editorial decisions are being shaped by fear of what the FCC might do next — is not a neutral administrative delay. It is additional months of documented chilling. If AliKhan concludes she lacks jurisdiction, she would likely dismiss the case and send it through the regulatory pipeline — a path that ABC’s attorneys argued would leave the network without meaningful protection for the duration of the administrative process. Wilkinson framed the stakes precisely when the judge pressed her on what irreparable injury had already occurred: “The irreparable injury is the chill, and the threat of retaliation for First Amendment speech and editorial decisions ABC makes every day.”

Under the Supreme Court’s 2024 ruling in National Rifle Association v. Vullo, the government may not “use the power of the State to punish or suppress disfavored expression,” including through a third-party regulatory mechanism. The 9-0 decision, written by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, is the controlling precedent for ABC’s retaliation claim — the court will need to decide whether Vullo’s standard applies here and whether ABC can reach that merits question at all given the jurisdictional challenge.

How It Got Here: From Kimmel to Court

The dispute traces to April 28, 2026, when FCC Chairman Brendan Carr ordered all eight Disney-owned ABC stations to file early license renewals years ahead of their scheduled October 2028 deadline. The order came one day after President Trump publicly demanded that ABC fire late-night host Jimmy Kimmel, following a joke about the First Lady that Trump found offensive. The FCC cited its ongoing investigation into Disney’s diversity, equity, and inclusion practices as the basis for the early review — not Kimmel’s remarks — but the timing was widely noted. The FCC had not ordered an early license review in over 50 years.

Carr is a career FCC regulator who was named chairman by President Trump in January 2025. He authored the communications chapter for Project 2025 and has used the FCC chairmanship to advance a broad technology and media agenda that includes spectrum reallocation, a light-touch federal framework for AI regulation aimed at pre-empting state rules, and what he has described as rolling back discriminatory diversity practices at media companies. At CES in January 2026, Carr described a commission proceeding examining AI transparency and disclosure requirements, comparing the FCC’s intended approach to the early internet’s light-touch regulatory framework.

The FCC’s investigation of Disney’s DEI practices had begun in March 2025, when Carr directed the agency’s Enforcement Bureau to examine whether Disney and ABC had violated FCC equal opportunity rules. By the time the early license review was ordered in April 2026, the DEI investigation had already expanded to include an inquiry into The View under equal-time broadcasting rules. The Disney-FCC dispute does not exist in isolation: Carr also threatened broadcasters in March 2026 that stations airing what he called “fake news” could lose their licenses, and he has raised license-related concerns about other network programming as well.

Disney filed its lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Washington on August 18, 2026, naming FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, commissioners Olivia Trusty and Anna Gomez, and the commission itself as defendants. Disney’s new CEO Josh D’Amaro authorized the litigation — notable because ABC had previously been among the first major media companies to settle private lawsuits brought by Trump, paying more than $15 million to resolve a defamation action over anchor George Stephanopoulos.

FCC Commissioner Dissent and the Broader Broadcast Industry

FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez, one of the commission’s two Democratic members and a named defendant in the lawsuit, has publicly disagreed with the agency’s direction. Gomez spent more than three decades in communications law and policy before being appointed to the commission in 2023, serving previously at the State Department’s Bureau of Cyberspace and Digital Policy, as deputy assistant secretary at the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, and in multiple roles at the FCC dating to the Clinton administration.

“For months, the FCC has waged a campaign of censorship and control against Disney’s ABC stations, using the threat of broadcast license revocations to punish a company for speech this administration doesn’t like,” Gomez said in a statement after the lawsuit was filed. “It is time this administration understands that the Constitution does not bend to political convenience, and that the First Amendment protects news and commentary even when those in power wish it didn’t.”

The case has broad implications beyond ABC. Every U.S. broadcast licensee — from major network affiliates to local public television stations — holds its license under the same legal framework. Duke Law professor Stuart Benjamin, who served two terms as an FCC adviser and has studied the public interest standard for decades, has said the FCC has historically been “wary about trying to push its public interest authority over the airwaves” and that applying it to punish specific editorial content decisions would be “unprecedented in the FCC’s history.” License challenges of this kind, legal experts have noted, have historically been reserved for cases involving “egregious, regular misconduct, like fraud” — not programming content the president dislikes.

The Cato Institute published an analysis in Summer 2026 arguing that the public interest standard, throughout its 90-year history, has rarely if ever been used to penalize broadcasters for editorial viewpoints, and called the current FCC’s approach a departure that threatens the editorial independence of every licensed broadcaster.

Is the Right Court Here at All?

The jurisdictional question Judge AliKhan is weighing has a long lineage in administrative law. The Hobbs Act and Communications Act Section 402 together establish a system in which courts of appeals — not district courts — review final FCC orders, and in which challenges to staff-level FCC actions must be exhausted through a full commission review before any court can weigh in.

The government’s argument is that ABC is trying to bypass this system: that the early renewal proceeding is still in progress, no final determination has been made, and the proper course is for Disney and ABC to participate in the administrative process — making their First Amendment arguments there — and then seek review from the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals if they lose. The Communications Act’s Section 402 has long been interpreted to give courts of appeals exclusive review over FCC orders granting or denying broadcast station applications.

ABC’s counterargument is that the process itself is the punishment. The threat of an adverse outcome — even without a final order — has already altered editorial decisions. Waiting two or more years for a D.C. Circuit ruling while the FCC’s review continues over ABC’s head is not a neutral administrative procedure; it is a continuation of the chilling effect. If AliKhan dismisses for lack of jurisdiction, the practical result is that there is no judicial check on the FCC’s use of the licensing process as an editorial pressure tool for the duration of any administrative appeal.

If AliKhan instead finds she has jurisdiction — which would likely represent the first time a federal district court has directly restrained the FCC from pursuing broadcast licensing action on First Amendment grounds — she would then need to assess whether ABC has demonstrated the four elements required for a preliminary injunction: likelihood of success on the merits, irreparable harm without relief, a balance of equities that favors the network, and an injunction that serves the public interest.

The merits question carries its own significance. Courts have consistently held that government treating speakers differently based on ideology or perspective — what the law calls viewpoint discrimination — is “an egregious form of content discrimination” under the First Amendment. NRA v. Vullo, decided unanimously by the Supreme Court in May 2024, held regulators cannot suppress viewpoints through regulatory power, even when the underlying action is otherwise within the agency’s authority. ABC’s complaint cites Trump’s own social media posts demanding license revocation as direct evidence that the regulatory campaign was motivated by viewpoint, not by any legitimate public interest finding.

What Comes Next

The briefing schedule AliKhan imposed after Tuesday’s hearing sets a ruling window of late October at the earliest. The DOJ’s supplemental brief is due October 9. ABC’s response is due October 14. The judge’s ruling, whenever it comes, will address both the threshold jurisdictional question and — if she finds jurisdiction proper — the merits of ABC’s request to freeze the FCC’s license review while the case proceeds.

If AliKhan denies jurisdiction, the case will almost certainly move to the D.C. Circuit. That route would preserve the FCC’s review in full effect during the appellate process. ABC’s attorneys argued Tuesday that this practical reality — the absence of an effective remedy during the ongoing chilling period — is itself the reason district court jurisdiction must exist here.

If she grants the injunction, it would be unprecedented: the first time a federal court has directly frozen FCC licensing action on the ground that the review was motivated by viewpoint-based retaliation rather than legitimate public interest findings.

Every broadcast licensee in the United States will be watching. A ruling that the FCC can use the licensing process to impose ongoing pressure over editorial content — whether or not it ever issues a final adverse order — changes the practical conditions under which every American broadcaster makes news decisions. A ruling that the First Amendment forecloses that use, and that district courts can step in to enforce that limit before any final administrative action, would be the most significant constraint placed on FCC authority over broadcast content in a generation.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can the FCC actually revoke ABC’s broadcast licenses?

License revocations are extremely rare — only a handful have occurred in the FCC’s 90-year history, and the last major revocation happened more than four decades ago. The more immediate concern is the early renewal process itself: even without a final revocation order, the FCC can refer the licenses to a formal administrative hearing, a mechanism so uncommon it has not been used against a major broadcaster in over 50 years. ABC argues the threat of that referral is already altering its editorial decisions, which is the harm at the center of the lawsuit.

What is the Hobbs Act and why does it matter for this case?

The Hobbs Act is a federal law that channels FCC judicial review to federal courts of appeals rather than district courts. It requires parties challenging FCC actions to first exhaust administrative remedies — seeking review before the full commission — before any court can weigh in. The government argues ABC filed its lawsuit in the wrong court and must go through this longer appellate pipeline instead. ABC argues that forcing it through a process that could take years, while the FCC review continues to chill its editorial decisions, IS the constitutional injury — making the jurisdictional battle more consequential than it might initially appear. If AliKhan agrees she lacks jurisdiction, there is no practical judicial remedy during the period the chilling effect continues.

What editorial changes has ABC already made because of the FCC pressure?

ABC documented two specific changes in its lawsuit and hearing filings. First, ABC News chose not to carry Trump’s July prime-time address containing unverified election claims — an editorial decision Wilkinson told the court provoked the administration’s anger and regulatory retaliation. Second, The View halted its longstanding practice of inviting political candidates for on-air interviews — a change the network attributes directly to concern about the FCC’s investigation into the show under equal-time rules. These documented changes are central to ABC’s “irreparable harm” argument: the chilling effect, the network says, is not theoretical but is already altering how it covers the 2026 midterm elections.

What does this case mean for other broadcasters?

Every radio and television station that uses the public airwaves holds its license under the same legal framework as ABC. If a court rules that the FCC can use the early renewal process as a sustained pressure tool over editorial content — without ever issuing a final adverse order — every licensee operates with the same potential vulnerability. If a court rules that the First Amendment prohibits this use and that district courts can enforce that limit in real time, it would be the most significant legal constraint on the FCC’s authority over broadcast editorial content in decades. Legal experts have noted that even if ABC ultimately prevails, the costs and distraction of the legal fight may already have achieved a chilling effect that extends beyond ABC itself to broadcasters watching the case and adjusting their own editorial decisions accordingly.