L.A. Must Justify Cable TV Policy, Justices Decide

The Supreme Court, ruling in a Los Angeles case, said Monday that cities may be in violation of the First Amendment guarantee of freedom of expression when they grant local monopolies to cable television firms.

The justices, still undecided whether cable TV should be viewed more like newspapers or local telephone service, nevertheless ruled unanimously that Los Angeles officials must justify in court their practice of allowing only one firm to serve part of a city.

The city’s policy of barring competing cable TV firms “plainly implicates First Amendment interests,” Justice William H. Rehnquist said.

“Cable television partakes some of the aspects of speech and the communication of ideas, as do the traditional enterprises of newspaper and book publishers, public speakers and pamphleteers,” Rehnquist said.

Stopped Short

However, the high court stopped short of settling the issue, saying, “The First Amendment values must be balanced against competing societal interests.”

Los Angeles attorneys had contended that competing cable firms would cause a construction nuisance and “a permanent visual blight” by adding extra wires to existing poles.

Under Monday’s ruling, the city must show in a federal district court trial that these concerns outweigh the advantages of an open market in cable TV.

The case has been closely watched by the cable industry, as well as by the nation’s 40 million cable TV subscribers who now have access to only one cable company.

Cable industry leaders said they were delighted with Monday’s partial victory.

The language of the court opinion “has affirmed cable operators’ status as editors, under the First Amendment,” said James P. Mooney, president of the National Cable Television Assn., which represents the more than 6,000 cable firms.

Pick and Choose

Cable operators pick and choose from an array of programming that they offer to their customers--a choice that Rehnquist likened to the decisions of a newspaper editor. However, many cities also require cable firms to offer certain programs, such as coverage of City Hall hearings.

“We believe this decision in itself presumptively invalidates all regulation of cable programming,” Mooney added.

Edward Perez, a Los Angeles assistant city attorney, called the court’s ruling a “very narrow decision.”

“It was not a clear victory for anyone,” he said.

In the coming trial, for which a date has not been set, the city will try to show that exclusive cable franchises will lead to better service than a “competitive free-for-all,” Perez said.

In 1982, Los Angeles decided to award a single license to cable firms operating in 14 different areas of the city.

One firm won the right to serve the 500,000 residents of South-Central Los Angeles, but a second company, Preferred Communications Inc., asked a year later for a license to operate in the same area but was denied.

The owners of the second firm filed suit in federal court on the grounds that their First Amendment rights were denied, but the case was dismissed. The district court relied on both California law and 1984 federal law that said that municipalities could regulate cable TV in a way similar to the way they control public utilities.

On appeal, however, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court issued a sweeping ruling that put cable TV into a protected class under the First Amendment, along with newspapers.

Rehnquist said Monday that he is not ready to go that far and would await “a fuller development of the disputed issues” in the Los Angeles trial (City of Los Angeles versus Preferred Communications Inc., 85-390).

No Service

Ironically, the residents of the South-Central area have no cable service now, Perez said, because the company that won the license, ACCESS Inc., has put off plans to lay wiring until the legal dispute is resolved.

In a related development, the justices said they will decide in the next year whether the federal government can regulate the rates that cable TV firms pay for using telephone poles.

To halt what cable operators called price gouging by telephone companies, Congress in 1978 directed the Federal Communications Commission to determine a fair payment for the use of the poles. Last year, however, a federal appeals court ruling in a Florida case threw out the law as unconstitutional. The high court will now review that decision (FCC versus Florida Power Corp., 85-1658).