A grassroots organization that challenged the broadcast license of a Fox-owned local television station during the Biden administration has asked a federal appeals court to force the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to act on the matter, effectively reviving its original challenge.
Earlier this month, the Media and Democracy (MAD) Project filed a petition for a writ of mandamus with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, arguing the FCC has unreasonably delayed consideration of an Application for Review filed with the full commission in February 2025.
The court filing came on the third anniversary of the MAD Project’s original Petition to Deny, which asked the FCC to examine whether Fox Corporation satisfied the agency’s character requirements for broadcast licensees. The petition was originally dismissed toward the end of FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel’s term as President Joe Biden’s time in the White House came to a close.
In her order on the matter, Rosenworcel said the license challenge and several others brought against TV stations by different groups were politically-motivated. Weeks after the decision, President Donald Trump’s appointed chairman Brendan Carr revived challenges against ABC, CBS and NBC-owned stations, but declined to do the same in the matter concerning the Fox-owned station.
The MAD Project based its challenge in part on findings from the Dominion Voting Systems defamation litigation, in which a Delaware judge determined that statements aired on the Fox News Channel about Dominion and the 2020 presidential election were false. Fox settled the case for $787.5 million, without admitting any wrongdoing.
The station targeted by MAD Project was WTXF (Channel 29) in Philadelphia, which shares common ownership with the Fox News Channel but is operated through separate business units. WTXF is part of Fox Television Stations, while Fox News is part of Fox News Media.
After Rosenworcel dismissed the petition, the MAD Project then asked the full commission to review that decision, but the application has remained pending for 17 months. The group says the delay prevents it from challenging the dismissal in federal court because it lacks a final commission order.
“The FCC cannot indefinitely hide behind bureau decisions and ignore our Application for Review to prevent the courts from reexamining its actions,” Milo Vassallo, Executive Director and Co-Founder of the MAD Project, said in a statement.
Attorneys for the MAD Project also said the FCC under Carr have given preferential treatment to Fox while taking a harder stance against stations owned by other broadcast networks.
The petition argues the matters are sufficiently similar to actions brought by Carr’s FCC against ABC-, CBS- and NBC-owned stations because each involves complaints about election-related programming and requests for action against television station licensees. The MAD Project contends the FCC has not provided a rational explanation for handling them differently.
The filing does not ask the appeals court to decide the underlying merits of the WTXF license challenge. Instead, the MAD Project wants the court to order the full commission to rule on its Application for Review, producing a final agency decision that can be appealed.
The FCC has not publicly commented on the matter.
