Federal Communications Commission v. Pacifica Foundation
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Federal Communications Commission v. Pacifica Foundation, 438 U.S. 726 (1978), is a landmark United States Supreme Court decision that defined the power of the Federal Communications Commission over indecent material as applied to broadcasting.
Facts
In 1973, a father complained to the FCC that his son had heard the George Carlin routine "Filthy Words" broadcast one afternoon over WBAI, a Pacifica Foundation FM radio station in New York City. (Carlin's routine included a discussion of the "seven dirty words": shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, mother-fucker, and tits.) Pacifica received a sanction from the FCC, in the form of a letter of reprimand, for allegedly violating FCC regulations which prohibited broadcasting "indecent" material. The affair became popularly known as "the Carlin case" even though Carlin himself was not a party to the lawsuit.Holding
The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the FCC action, by a vote of 5 to 4, ruling that the routine was "indecent but not obscene." The Court stated that the FCC had the authority to prohibit such broadcasts during hours when children were likely to be among the audience.Legislation
In December 2003, U.S. congressman Doug Ose (R-CA) introduced a bill (H.R. 3687) to outlaw the broadcast of Carlin's seven "dirty words," including "compound use (including hyphenated compounds) of such words and phrases with each other or with other words or phrases, and other grammatical forms of such words and phrases (including verb, adjective, gerund, participle, and infinitive forms)." (The bill omits tits, and includes ass and asshole which were not part of Carlin's original routine). The bill was sent to the Subcommittee on the Constitution and did not leave the committee before the end of the session.External links
- [Text of the decision] from the Electronic Frontier Foundation
- [Text of the decision courtesy of FindLaw].
- [First Amendment Library entry on FCC v. Pacifica Foundation]
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