WASHINGTON — Disney filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. accusing the Federal Communications Commission of violating the First Amendment by targeting ABC's broadcast licenses in retaliation for the network's programming choices. The suit names FCC Chairman Brendan Carr and asks the court for a temporary restraining order and a preliminary injunction that would halt the license challenge before it advances further.
The lawsuit's central allegation is direct: the Trump administration "has waged a retaliatory campaign against ABC for a single reason: it disapproves of what ABC broadcasts." Disney said it came to court "reluctantly," arguing there is "no alternative means to eliminate these ongoing and immediate threats other than total capitulation to the administration's demands."
The FCC's target is a specific set of eight broadcast stations that Disney owns directly. More than 200 ABC-affiliated stations operate across the United States, but the vast majority are owned by other companies. Only Disney's eight owned-and-operated stations fall under the FCC challenge. Those stations broadcast over the public airwaves, which places them under the FCC's licensing authority.
The license fight traces back to April of last year, when conservatives reacted with outrage over a joke made by ABC late-night host Jimmy Kimmel. President Trump publicly pressured ABC to fire Kimmel. When ABC declined, Carr ordered the network to file early-renewal paperwork for its eight station licenses — even though none of those licenses were due for renewal for several more years. Carr said the timing was a coincidence and tied the early-renewal order to a separate investigation into Disney's diversity, equity and inclusion practices. Critics, including First Amendment lawyers, called that explanation a cover for political retaliation.
The FCC is also investigating ABC's daytime talk show "The View" as part of the broader probe. Carr has said publicly that Disney's DEI practices may constitute "illegal DEI discrimination," a claim Disney disputes. The lawsuit treats both the DEI investigation and the Kimmel-linked license order as components of the same retaliatory campaign.
FCC broadcast licenses are renewed on an eight-year cycle and are almost never revoked. The FCC had not filed an early-renewal order in decades before Carr issued one against Disney this year. The suit calls the license challenge an "extraordinary assault on free speech" and argues the court must step in to stop it.
Carr was appointed by Trump and is widely regarded as a loyalist. He has used his chairmanship to scrutinize media companies on DEI grounds — a broader effort by the administration to pressure corporations on diversity programs through regulatory levers. Disney is the most prominent target to date.
Disney's complaint is explicit that the company did not seek this confrontation. The suit says Disney is a company better known for theme parks, Star Wars and ESPN than for its local television stations, and that it pursued legal action only after exhausting other options. The company's position is that accepting the FCC's demands without a court fight would amount to surrendering editorial control to the government.
The request for a temporary restraining order is the most urgent piece of the litigation. If granted, it would freeze Carr's ability to move the license-renewal proceedings forward while the underlying First Amendment case is litigated. Disney is arguing irreparable harm — that the ongoing threat to its licenses is itself a form of coercion that chills what the network broadcasts, regardless of whether any license is ultimately revoked.
Carr did not respond to requests for comment before the suit was filed. The White House has not issued a formal statement on the litigation.
The case puts a fundamental question before a federal judge: whether a presidential administration can use the FCC's licensing power as a lever to pressure a broadcaster over content it dislikes without violating the First Amendment. Courts have long held that the government cannot condition a broadcast license on editorial compliance, but the specific use of early-renewal proceedings as a pressure tool is largely untested legal territory.
Disney's lawsuit lands as the administration's broader effort to use regulatory agencies against perceived media adversaries faces growing legal scrutiny. The outcome of the ABC case will set a direct precedent for how far an FCC chairman can push license proceedings against a network before a court calls it unconstitutional retaliation.
