ABC Sues FCC Over Licenses: Disney v. Trump?
Disney and ABC sued the Federal Communications Commission on August 18, accusing the agency of a retaliatory campaign to punish the network’s programming through its licensing power. The suit turns a regulatory dispute into a First Amendment case with a media company, for once, on the speech-protective side.
What the suit alleges
- The claim is government retaliation. The complaint, filed in federal court in Washington, argues the administration “has waged a retaliatory campaign against ABC for a single reason: it disapproves of what ABC broadcasts.” Its opening line is a thesis: “Government censorship is deeply un-American.”
- The trigger is an early license review. The FCC moved in April to open an early renewal review of ABC’s owned stations and gave the company 30 days to file applications, a demand the suit says the agency had not made in “more than half a century.”
- The stakes are eight stations. The review covers 8 ABC-owned broadcast stations in markets including New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago. A license is the one thing a broadcaster cannot replace, which is what makes an early review a pressure point rather than a formality.
Who is named
The defendants are the commissioners themselves. The suit names FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, Commissioner Anna Gomez, the agency’s lone Democrat, and Commissioner Olivia Trusty, with two vacant seats filled by placeholder “John Doe” defendants. Gomez, notably, has publicly sided with the plaintiffs, saying Disney “has found its courage.”
How we got here
The dispute has a yearlong arc and runs through late-night television.
- The Kimmel episode set the pattern. In September 2025, ABC suspended Jimmy Kimmel after Carr publicly warned the network it could handle the matter “the easy way or the hard way,” amid presidential calls for the host’s removal. Kimmel returned to air days later after a public backlash.
- “The View” is the second thread. The complaint alleges FCC pressure made ABC more cautious about booking political candidates on the daytime show, part of what it describes as a sustained campaign tied to programming the administration dislikes.
- The early review is the escalation. Against that backdrop, the suit casts the April renewal demand not as routine oversight but as a regulatory expression of a grievance, using licensing authority to accomplish what the First Amendment forbids directly.
What they’re saying
Carr rejected the suit outright. He called it a “meritless case based on their own campaign of disinformation” and said all broadcasters “have an obligation to operate in the public interest, even Disney.” The agency, he added, “will follow the facts and the law wherever they go.” The competing framings are now set: retaliation on one side, public-interest regulation on the other, with the same set of facts underneath.
Why it matters
The legal core is the unconstitutional-conditions doctrine, the principle that the government cannot use a benefit it controls, here a broadcast license, to punish protected speech it cannot regulate directly. Broadcasters occupy a weaker First Amendment position than newspapers because they use public spectrum and answer to the FCC for it. That is precisely why an early, unusual license review is a serious lever, and why the case will test how far the “public interest” standard can be stretched before it becomes a speech penalty.
The principle at issue does not belong to either party, and conservatives have every reason to watch it closely. A licensing power aimed at a network for its coverage will also be aimed at other networks by other administrations. The facts here will be contested, and the FCC’s public-interest mandate is real. But the doctrine the suit invokes, that regulatory tools cannot be turned into speech penalties, is one the right has defended in other contexts and should not abandon because the speaker this time is Disney.
-The Editors
Liberty · Upstream of the Swamp · August 20, 2026
