Supreme Court Upholds FCC Order Finding Broadcasts with F-Word Indecent

摘要

Federal law bans the broadcasting of "any . . . indecent . . . language" [18 U. S. C. § 1464], which includes references to sexual or excretory activity or organs. Having first defined the prohibited speech in 1975, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) took a cautious but gradually expanding approach to enforcing the statutory prohibition. In 2004, the FCC's Golden Globes Order declared for the first time that an expletive (nonliteral) use of the F-word or the S-word could be actionably indecent, even when the word is used only once.