NYC court strikes down FCC rules for fleeting expletives on TV

After today's ruling by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan, TV censorship has taken a hit.

According to the Associated Press , the court has overturned a Federal Communications Commission policy, saying that the agency's guidelines for "fleeting expletives and other indecencies in broadcast violate the First Amendment."

The policy went into effect in 2004, at a time when indecency in broadcast was a hot-button issue -- right after Janet Jackson's notorious "wardrobe malfunction" at the Super Bowl.

After that incident, the maximum fines for indecency in broadcast skyrocketed from $32,500 to $325,000.

Janet Jackson's case was not the only trigger -- in 2003, U2 singer Bono used an expletive in his live, televised speech at the Golden Globes after winning an award.

Now, the three-judge panel in New York has decided to overturn the policy because they believe the FCC's policy is "unconstitutionally vague, creating a chilling effect that goes far beyond the fleeting expletives at issue here."

The appeals court added that the "chilling effect" would lead to mass censorship of potentially valuable material, because "broadcasters have no way of knowing what the FCC will find offensive."

In a Washington Post article, Cecilia Kang wrote that the policy director of the Media Access Project, Andrew Jay Schwartzman, said broadcasters plan to take their case to the Supreme Court to finally overturn the FCC's policy.

“The score for today’s game is First Amendment one, censorship zero," Schwartzman said.