Disney sues the FCC, calling an early review of ABC's licenses retaliation for its coverage

Political Guyentist · August 19, 20263 min read

Disney wants a federal judge to stop the review before it starts, and says the agency's pressure has already changed what ABC puts on the air.

Disney and ABC sued the Federal Communications Commission on Tuesday, Aug. 18, to challenge an early review of ABC broadcast licenses. The companies accuse the Trump administration of using the review to censor journalists and say the FCC is violating their First Amendment rights.

What an early license review does to a broadcaster before anyone rules on anything:

Disney owns eight ABC stations outright, including New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. More than 200 other ABC stations are licensed to separate companies such as Nexstar and Sinclair — the ones Disney cannot defend in this lawsuit.
A license sitting under review is hard to sell, borrow against, or fold into a merger, so the cost lands on station owners months or years before the FCC decides anything.
The FCC has never revoked a major network station's license over news content. The remedy nobody expects is the one that makes the threat work.

What we’re less sure of3 of 8 claims

Medium
Disney owns eight ABC stations outright, including New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, while more than 200 other ABC stations are licensed to separate companies such as Nexstar and Sinclair.
Station counts are broadly consistent with public ownership data but the exact figures are not attributed to a named source in the provided reporting.
Medium
Disney settled a Trump defamation suit in December 2024 for $15 million to his presidential library plus $1 million in fees, and Paramount paid $16 million in July 2025 while the FCC weighed its Skydance merger.
Settlement terms match widely reported figures, but the amounts and timing are background context not sourced in the two listed articles.
Medium
The FCC has never revoked a major network station's license over news content.
Consistent with the historical record and commonly stated by legal commentators, but it is an unsourced absolute claim in this story.

Oversight

Let the review finish. Broadcast stations use public airwaves under a federal permit; cable and podcasts do not. The permit carries duties, and the FCC's job is to enforce them. The timing is bad: Chairman Brendan Carr attacked ABC's late-night host Jimmy Kimmel in September 2025, and this order followed. These licenses were not due before 2028, and 30 days for months of paperwork is unfair. Give Disney more time. But the agency has found nothing and revoked nothing. Disney wants a judge to kill a review with no findings. Any licensee could ask for that.

Retaliation

A judge should stop the review now. An open review costs money by itself: the license is hard to sell, borrow against, or fold into a merger. Carr is right that a station on public airwaves owes the public something. Disney's filing says ABC already grew more careful about which candidates it books on ‘The View.’ No ruling was needed for that. The obvious reply is that Disney is big enough to outlast an agency. It has not tried. It put $15 million toward Trump's presidential foundation in December 2024 to settle a defamation suit, and in 2025 it pulled its late-night host Jimmy Kimmel off the air for a week.

Disney offers the booking change as its proof of a chilling effect: the network says it hesitated over political guests while the review was pending, months before the FCC can rule on anything.