ABC, in a new filing in its First Amendment lawsuit against the FCC, claims that the agency's early-license renewal demand for its local TV stations was done in such a way as to circumvent  judicial review. 

On Aug. 18, ABC sued the FCC and chairman Brendan Carr, a Trump loyalist, alleging the commission was waging an  extraordinary assault  on its First Amendment rights through the implicit threat of revoking its broadcast licenses for eight owned-and-operated stations. The FCC insists its order requiring ABC to apply for early license renewals was initiated from the agency's investigation into alleged diversity, equity and inclusion employment practices at Disney and ABC.

At an Oct. 6 hearing, Judge Loren AliKhan of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, who is hearing the case, instructed the FCC to submit a supplemental filing  on the list of alternative tools to compel discovery  in its DEI investigation into Disney and ABC other than early license renewals.

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On Monday, ABC responded to the FCC's filing. The FCC had argued at the hearing that   the license renewal process is not about the licenses,' but rather an attempt to deal with what they claim to be a discovery deficiency  in the DEI probe, the network says in the fling.  But their supplemental briefing only confirms what they conceded at the hearing: there are  a number of different tools' by which the agency could have addressed the purported discovery deficiency. 

ABC continued:  These are not merely  theoretical[]' tools… they have been used by the agency for decades. Yet the agency tried none of those less intrusive tools here, instead taking the unprecedented step of calling for early license renewal of all eight ABC-owned stations at once. Defendants' own admissions leave no doubt as to why - Defendants sought to inflict maximal coercive pressure on the media company whose speech the Administration sought to curb, while deliberately evading judicial review. 

ABC has previously said that in the FCC's DEI probe, it has produced over 11,000 pages of responsive documents  on a mutually 
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