ABC and 13 Former FCC Officials Push Back on Carr's License Review of Eight Disney Stations

Since Free Press's June filing calling the ABC license proceeding illegitimate, two more heavyweight rebuttals landed at the FCC this week. ABC's own lawyers filed a scathing response Thursday, and 13 former FCC officials, spanning both parties, filed comments Wednesday accusing Chairman Brendan Carr of running an unconstitutional operation against the network.

The underlying fight over Carr's early license review of eight ABC-owned stations has been building for months. What's changed is the size and seniority of the chorus now saying it's illegal.

The 13 former officials include people who served under both Republican and Democratic presidents: former chairs Mark S. Fowler, Alfred C. Sikes, and Thomas E. Wheeler, plus former commissioners Rachelle B. Chong and Gloria Tristani, according to a filing reported by TV Technology. Their comment calls the proceeding "a grave violation of both the Communications Act and the Constitution" and says it amounts to "an assault on free speech disguised as regulatory process."

When Republican-appointed former chairs and Democrat-appointed former commissioners sign the same document accusing a sitting FCC chairman of constitutional violations, the lineup signals a genuine cross-ideological concern about how the agency is using its power.

ABC's lawyers, in their own filing posted to the FCC's website, framed the review as a message to the entire industry. "The retaliation against ABC is a signal to every media company in the country: accommodate the Administration's view of what news coverage should look like or pay the price," the network's attorneys wrote, according to Talking Points Memo.

Free Press, which has been filing against this proceeding since at least June, renewed its attack this week too, calling the review "an arbitrary and capricious abuse of power" in a new docket filing. Matt Wood, the group's vice president of policy, said Carr's early-renewal process is "a rotten fig leaf to provide cover for Brendan Carr using the FCC's investigatory powers to harass, intimidate, and punish ABC for its speech."

Carr's official justification is an investigation into whether Disney engaged in "invidious discrimination," tied to hiring or diversity practices. But according to Free Press's filing, the FCC has never identified a single specific allegation of unlawful discrimination by Disney, ABC, or its local stations. An agency threatening to strip broadcast licenses from eight stations, covering markets including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Houston, ought to be able to point to something concrete. So far it hasn't, based on what's been made public in the docket.

Carr's defenders would say the discrimination inquiry is a legitimate, ongoing investigation and that early renewal review is a standard regulatory tool, not retaliation. The FCC does have authority to review licensee conduct, and diversity-hiring practices at a company the size of Disney are a plausible subject for scrutiny.

The timeline, however, undercuts that defense. Talking Points Memo reported that Carr began threatening early license renewals after Trump launched military action against Iran earlier this year, and that Carr posted on X in March tying the threat directly to war coverage: "Broadcasters that are running hoaxes and news distortions — also known as the fake news — have a chance now to correct course before their license renewals come up." That post referenced a Trump Truth Social complaint about Iran war coverage, not a discrimination complaint.

Trump has also publicly called for ABC and NBC to lose their licenses over content decisions, including their coverage of his election-fraud claims, according to Talking Points Memo. Pro-Trump advocacy groups have separately petitioned the FCC to deny renewal for the eight Disney stations.

No charges have been filed against Disney or ABC. No court has ruled the FCC's proceeding unlawful. This is a contested regulatory process, not a settled legal matter, and Carr has not been forced by any court or independent body to identify a specific discrimination allegation yet.

The critics' broader concern is that the process itself may be designed to let the FCC hold license jeopardy over a broadcaster's head indefinitely without ever having to prove a specific violation. Free Press argues the correct remedy for a real discrimination finding, if one existed, would never be license revocation anyway, since there's no precedent for that penalty in comparable cases.

A related petition from some of the same former officials, filed in November 2025 asking the FCC to rescind its "news distortion" policy, was dismissed in June on procedural grounds rather than on the merits, according to TV Technology. This means the underlying constitutional question hasn't actually been resolved by anyone with authority to resolve it. It's simply been filed, contested, and left open.

The FCC has not set a public timeline for when it will rule on the eight ABC station licenses. Until it does, or until a court intervenes, the stations keep operating under their current licenses while the fight over Carr's authority plays out entirely on paper.