NAB Appeals EEO Order; Catholic Broadcaster Petition Expanded
NAB filed a petition for partial reconsideration of the FCC’s equal employment opportunity data collection order and Catholic broadcasters refiled and expanded their existing petition (see 2405010070), according to filings in docket 98-204 this week. The EEO order also was…
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challenged in court (see 2405060057). NAB’s petition calls for the agency to reconsider making the broadcaster workforce diversity data publicly available and station specific and to reconsider changes to Form 395-B to allow for reporting of nonbinary genders. Making the data public violates the First and Fifth amendments and could threaten employee privacy, NAB said. “Given the Commission’s new categorization concerning non-binary employees, a number of broadcasters also have expressed concern on behalf of their employees who would be identified as such that they could be harassed,” NAB said. The FCC’s position that Congress requires it to regulate broadcaster EEO is wrong, and disclosing the data “will deliberately unleash pressure on stations to engage in preferential hiring practices,” NAB said. “The FCC effectively invites third-party activist groups to use the data for such inappropriate purposes.” The joint filing from Catholic broadcasters and groups including the Catholic Radio Association and the Sanctus Josephus Society has added another broadcaster to the 19 previously included in the petition. Jackson Lansing Catholic Radio has joined Archangel Communications, Holy Family Communications and others in calling on the FCC to reconsider the recognition of nonbinary gender in Form 395-B. The new filing also expands the Catholic broadcasters' First Amendment arguments. Speaking on a podcast Wednesday, an attorney representing one of the organizations pursuing a legal challenge to the EEO order condemned it as an attempt to control broadcasters and collect employee personal information. “They want to use this regulation to force organizations to use hiring practices for people of the LGBTQ persuasion that they prefer,” said Abraham Hamilton, general counsel of the American Family Association. Hamilton compared the public listing of the EEO data to the Southern Poverty Law Center’s listing of hate groups and said the FCC wants to force broadcasters to “capitulate” to “the Biden administration’s obsession with the LGBTQIAP+ sexual deviancy sociopolitical agenda.”