Court blocks Trump FCC order that could flood broadcast TV with more election ads

A federal appeals court has blocked a Federal Communications Commission policy that would have let national political party committees and certain joint fundraising groups buy broadcast television and radio advertising at the same steep discount reserved for individual candidates.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruled 2-1 on Tuesday against a public notice issued by the FCC’s Media Bureau in March, which had interpreted the “lowest unit charge” requirement broadly enough to cover party committees as well as candidates themselves. Under federal law, broadcasters must offer candidates their lowest available advertising rate in the weeks before an election — 45 days before a primary and 60 before a general election. The FCC’s notice would have extended that same discount to groups like the National Republican Congressional Committee and the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which intervened in the case to defend the policy.

Four Democratic candidates and officeholders challenged the rule: Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff, Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown, former North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper, and Michigan congressional candidate Kristen McDonald Rivet. Writing for the majority, Circuit Judge King sided with them, finding that the plain language of the Communications Act reserves the discount for candidates alone. FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez, a Democrat, had separately warned before the ruling that the policy would direct broadcasters to cut prices during their most lucrative season even as the same commission argued elsewhere that stations needed financial relief to compete with streaming services.

The timing made the case urgent. The public notice was due to take effect on September 4, just ahead of the November midterms, and the ruling arrives as campaign spending is projected to hit record levels. Advertising intelligence firm AdImpact projects the 2026 election cycle will reach $11.6 billion in total spending, with $5.6 billion of that on broadcast television alone, in a cycle where control of Congress is at stake.

The practical effect is that party committees now retain no special claim to the candidate discount rate. Individual campaigns keep exclusive access to the lowest advertising rates broadcasters offer, while coordinated spending by national party organizations must go through the normal, uncapped commercial rate instead. A spokesperson for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, Joanna Rodriguez, called the decision incorrect and said it ignored decades of precedent, signaling the fight is unlikely to end with this ruling.

The case also lands against a broader backdrop of loosened limits on coordination between parties and candidates. A separate Supreme Court decision had already allowed unlimited coordinated spending between the two, and Tuesday’s ruling narrows one of the mechanisms parties might have used to make that coordinated money go further on the air. With control of both chambers of Congress up for grabs in November, how much of that $11.6 billion in projected spending gets routed through the discount rate has real consequences for which side can outspend the other in contested races.

Sources:
tvtechnology.com
ground.news
kelo.com (Reuters)
atlantanewsfirst.com
newsmax.com