Disney sues US regulator, claiming political retaliation over ABC stations

Disney has filed a lawsuit against the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) amid efforts to stop an early licence review for eight ABC-owned and -operated stations around the United States.

In the lawsuit filed in a federal court in Washington, DC, the media giant alleged the early renewal is an effort by the administration of US President Donald Trump to intimidate the company after infuriating the president.

In April, the FCC ordered the network’s stations, which include its affiliates in New York and Los Angeles, to file their licence renewals ahead of schedule despite the fact that for six of its stations, the current term isn’t even halfway finished. The station with the closest deadline is WTVD in Durham, North Carolina, but that is not until December 2028. The network says the move is part of a political “retaliatory campaign”.

“Again and again, the Administration has attacked ABC’s speech – the stories its journalists report and the viewpoints its network programs air. Over time, those attacks have escalated into express demands that ABC be stripped of its broadcast licenses because of its speech,” the 46-page complaint said.

The suit presented a wave of Truth Social posts that the president posted in 2025 threatening the network, among them one saying that the network “should lose their Licences for their unfair coverage of Republicans and/or Conservatives”.

The FCC said the April licence renewal call was a result of diversity, equity and inclusion practices at ABC’s parent company, Disney, and an investigation into the ABC network’s talk show programme The View.

In March, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr threatened broadcasters, saying stations airing “fake news” could lose their licences amid Trump’s frustration with coverage of the US-Israel war on Iran.

Not long after, Trump demanded that ABC fire late-night host Jimmy Kimmel over comments he made before the White House correspondents dinner shooting in which he called first lady Melania Trump an “expectant widow”. Trump responded to them after the shooting, characterising them “a call to violence”.

“It’s about time for someone to take Brendan Carr and his FCC to court over their endless campaign of intimidation and retaliation against journalism that displeases Carr’s thin-skinned boss,” Seth Stern, director of advocacy at the Freedom of the Press Foundation, told Al Jazeera.

“No matter what pretexts he asserts, Carr’s modus operandi is clear: to serve as Trump’s censorship tsar and abuse his office to repeatedly and exclusively target Trump’s perceived adversaries in the media, whether through sham proceedings or threatening letters and X posts.”

The network called for a “speedy hearing” in the complaint as well as a temporary restraining order.

News of the lawsuit sent Disney’s stock surging in morning trading by 1.1 percent.