Cite as: 512 U. S. 622 (1994)
Opinion of the Court
IV). Each of the plaintiffs filed a motion for summary judgment; several intervenor-defendants filed cross-motions for summary judgment; and the Government filed a cross-motion to dismiss. Although the Government had not asked for summary judgment, the District Court, in a divided opinion, granted summary judgment in favor of the Government and the other intervenor-defendants, ruling that the must-carry provisions are consistent with the First Amendment. 819 F. Supp. 32 (1993).
The court found that in enacting the must-carry provisions, Congress employed "its regulatory powers over the economy to impose order upon a market in dysfunction." Id., at 40. The court characterized the 1992 Cable Act as "simply industry-specific antitrust and fair trade practice regulatory legislation," ibid., and said that the must-carry requirements "are essentially economic regulation designed to create competitive balance in the video industry as a whole, and to redress the effects of cable operators' anticompetitive practices," ibid. The court rejected appellants' contention that the must-carry requirements warrant strict scrutiny as a content-based regulation, concluding that both the commercial and public broadcast provisions "are, in intent as well as form, unrelated (in all but the most recondite sense) to the content of any messages that [the] cable operators, broadcasters, and programmers have in contemplation to deliver." Ibid. The court proceeded to sustain the must-carry provisions under the intermediate standard of scrutiny set forth in United States v. O'Brien, 391 U. S. 367 (1968), concluding that the preservation of local broadcasting is an important governmental interest, and that the must-carry provisions are sufficiently tailored to serve that interest. 819 F. Supp., at 45-47.
Judge Williams dissented. He acknowledged the "very real problem" that "cable systems control access 'bottlenecks' to an important communications medium," id., at 57, but concluded that Congress may not address that problem
635
Page: Index Previous 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007