The senior Republican on the Federal Communications Commission is unhappy about its decision to resume requiring employment reports from broadcasters about the composition of their workforces. Brendan Carr said the vote means “the FCC will now post a race and gender scorecard for each and every TV and radio broadcast station in the country.”
He wrote an unusually long dissent to explain his no vote in the 3–2 party-line outcome.
Carr says he would have gone along with reinstating the requirement that broadcasters annually file EEO Form 395-B, which lists the race and gender of their employees, and he would have been OK with releasing the data on an aggregated or anonymous basis.
But he says the commission’s plan to publish the data on a station-by-station basis violates both the First and Fifth Amendments.
“For at least the third time now, the FCC once again seeks to pressure broadcasters into making hiring decisions on the basis of race and gender,” he wrote. He rejected arguments that the information would not lead to undue public pressure.
“The FCC caves to the demands of activist groups that have worked for years and across different industries to persuade the federal government to obtain — and most importantly publish — this type of data about individual businesses. This is no benign disclosure regime. The record makes clear that the FCC is choosing to publish these scorecards for one and only one reason: to ensure that individual businesses are targeted and pressured into making decisions based on race and gender.” (Read Carr’s statement.)
Collection of the form had been suspended in 2001. The National Association of Broadcasters and state broadcast associations had argued against the return of the requirement, but the FCC rejected their legal positions as well as any notion that the policy is unconstitutional.
“With today’s action,” the order states, “we restore the process of giving broadcasters, Congress and ourselves the data needed to better understand the workforce composition in the broadcast sector. We find further that continuing to collect this information in a transparent manner is consistent with a broader shift towards greater openness regarding diversity, equity and inclusion across both corporate America and government.”
Commissioner Geoffrey Starks is the Democratic commissioner who led the initiative with the backing of Rep. Yvette Clarke and Sen. Chris Van Hollen.
“Some might pretend that what we do today is a radical break outside of this agency’s authority,” Starks wrote in a statement Thursday. “It is not. Quite simply, today we reinstate a longstanding, statutorily-mandated requirement to collect workforce diversity data from broadcasters.
“As always with good government, we start with data,” Starks continued. “And data is most effective when it is available to everyone.
“The rules we reinstate today require broadcasters to file their workforce composition data publicly. This data will enable the commission to monitor employment trends in the industry — as we know, a dynamic and fast-changing one — and report to Congress on its learnings. It will give researchers new workforce composition information to explore. And it will grant members of the public transparency — a window into their local broadcast station, not just as a programmer, but as an employer.” (Read Starks’ statement.)
