CV NEWS FEED // CatholicVote.org Education Fund (CVEF) filed an amicus curiae brief in support of broadcasters who hold that the Copyright Royalty Board is discriminating against them due to their religious views.
CVEF is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to hear National Religious Broadcasters Noncommercial Music License Committee (NRBNMLC) v. Copyright Royalty Board (CRB).
In the case, the NRBNMLC is asking the Court to overturn a federal appeals court’s July 2023 ruling that sided with the CRB, thus allowing its alleged discrimination of the broadcasters to continue.
CVEF’s brief stated that it “is concerned that the D.C. Circuit’s opinion… improperly narrows the safeguards afforded free exercise under” two recent Supreme Court rulings as well as the Clinton-era Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 (RFRA).
The non-profit continued:
These protections of religious freedom are critical to ensure that the government does not trench upon free exercise under the guise of neutral, generally applicable laws that favor comparable secular activity, deny religious claimants benefits that are available to secular groups, or substantially burden religious activity.
CVEF outlined that the “religious webcasters were treated worse than comparable NPR stations and were excluded from the benefits that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (“CPB”) provides to secular webcasters.”
The organization argued that because the appeals court ruled against the coalition of religious broadcasters, religious groups “now face the threat of discriminatory practices, such as the disparate rates imposed in this case.”
In its brief, CVEF cited two recent instances where the Supreme Court upheld religious freedom rights under the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution.
In Tandon v. Newsom (2021), the Court ruled 5-4 that the state of California could not prevent at-home religious gatherings via its COVID restrictions.
In Carson v. Makin (2022), the court held in a 6-3 ruling that Maine could not prevent parents from using vouchers to send their children to religious schools.
>> IOWA GOVERNOR SIGNS ACT PROTECTING RELIGIOUS FREEDOM <<
The dispute in NRBNMLC v. CRB arose three years ago.
According to the pro-religious freedom legal group Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), the CRB then “formally adopted royalty rates for calendar years 2021 through 2025 that require noncommercial religious webcasters with more than 218 average listeners to pay over 18 times the secular NPR-webcaster rate.”
“The rate structure gives religious broadcasters an unconstitutional choice: suppress your speech or pay exorbitant fees,” ADF continued:
After the CRB adopted these discriminatory rates, the NRBNMLC appealed the ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. But the circuit court ignored the CRB’s religious discrimination, failed to correctly apply multiple statutes, and affirmed the rate structure.
ADF has also asked the Supreme Court to hear the case.
“The government punishes noncommercial religious broadcasters by making them pay a license fee more than 18 times higher than NPR above a modest listener threshold,” ADF Senior Counsel John Bursch stated in February.
Bursch indicated that “[t]his unlawful discrimination forces some noncommercial religious stations to stay small and restrict their listener reach so they can afford to stream online.”
Intellectual property attorney Karyn Ablin agreed with Bursch, noting at the time that the CRB’s “noncommercial rate structure places a heavy thumb on the webcasting scale in favor of secular NPR speech over religious speech.”
“This harms hundreds of noncommercial religious stations nationwide, including over 1,000 represented by the [NRBMLC],” added Ablin. Ablin is a co-counsel representing the NRBMLC in the case.
>> RELIGIOUS FREEDOM EXPERT: WISCONSIN CASE INFRINGES ON RELIGION <<
The CRB consists of a panel of three judges appointed by the Librarian of Congress. Per the CRB’s website, “[t]he Judges determine and adjust royalty rates and terms applicable to the statutory copyright licenses.”
“They also oversee distribution of royalties deposited with the Copyright Office by certain statutory licensees and adjudicate controversies relating to the distributions,” the website noted.
The 20-year-old judicial body was created by the Bush-era Copyright Royalty and Distribution Reform Act of 2004 (CRDRA).
The post CatholicVote Files SCOTUS Amicus Brief in Support of Religious Broadcasters appeared first on CatholicVote org.