Supreme Court strikes blow to religious webcasting

The National Religious Broadcasters Association has lost its challenge to a rate system that it says forces religious webcasters to pay more to promote religious messages than it does for secular entities. The association’s  Noncommercial Music License Committee had challenged the rate increases on the grounds of religious freedom and administrative procedure.

This week, the U.S. Supreme Court refused the committee’s petition that sought to overturn the rate hikes. The petition claimed the hikes amounted to religious discrimination and alleged that the Copyright Royalty Board had not adhered to proper procedures.

Although the rule does not explicitly impose higher rates on religious webcasters, the committee argued that the noncommercial rate increases created a “two-tier noncommercial rate structure” that favored secular speech over religious expression. They cited the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, noting that religious radio stations were subjected to higher rates than those charged to National Public Radio-affiliated stations, which had negotiated a separate agreement for lower rates.

“The result is government suppression of religious speech online, skewing ‘the modern public square’ in favor of secular content,” the NRB committee said. It further claimed that the rate hikes violated the Administrative Procedure Act by shifting the burden of proof to the committee and introducing a new expert testimony requirement midway through the review process.

John Bursch, senior counsel for the Alliance Defending Freedom, earlier this year said  he believed the board was “violating federal law and the U.S. Constitution.”

“The government punishes noncommercial religious broadcasters by making them pay a license fee more than 18 times higher than NPR above a modest listener threshold,” he said, according to “The Christian Post.” “This unlawful discrimination forces some noncommercial religious stations to stay small and restrict their listener reach so they can afford to stream online.”

–Alan Goforth | Metro Voice