January 20, 2000
                                
In the Matter of Review of the Commission's Broadcast and Cable Equal Employment
Opportunity Rules and Policies and Termination of the EEO Streamlining Proceeding,
                 MM Dockets Nos. 98-24, 96-16.

   Press Statement of Commissioner Harold W. Furchtgott-Roth
                                
                                                               
     In the Lutheran Church case, the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit
ruled that this Commission's Equal Employment Opportunity regulations denied the equal
protection of the laws to persons seeking employment at broadcast stations.  Those regulations
also made broadcasters, the Court said, "involuntary participant[s] in a discriminatory scheme." 
To enforce a program that requires regulatees to engage in the most historically odious sort of
discrimination -- discrimination based on race  -- is a most grievous offense.
 
     After careful consideration, I am not persuaded that the Commission's efforts to conform
these regulations to the requirements of Equal Protection -- and thus to avoid committing this
offense again -- are adequate.  The revised regulations bear some of the same characteristics that
led the Court of Appeals to find the original rules unconstitutional.  In particular, the
Commission's continued insistence on requiring broadcasters to classify applicants and employees
based on their race and gender, factors that should be irrelevant to a person's job qualifications, is
legally troublesome.  

Perhaps, at the end of the day, the Commission will successfully defend these regulations
against the claim that they do not afford equal protection to all people.  Because I cannot
conclude that the rules are free from reasonable constitutional doubt, however, I cannot support
their adoption.  I therefore dissent from this item.


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