Federal court upholds Maine community TV law

(The Center Square) – A federal appeals court has upheld a 2019 Maine law aimed at protecting consumer access to community-run TV stations.

The ruling by the U.S. First Circuit Court of Appeals, which applies to public, educational and government access channels, or PEGs, affirms a lower court ruling rejecting a legal challenge over the law that requires cable providers to treat those channels like others in their line-ups.

Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey praised the ruling, saying it will protect community-run television stations that “provide vital public, educational and governmental programming.”

“Community-run television stations are a priceless public resource, and the court’s ruling will go far in ensuring their continuing vitality by protecting against marginalization by cable television operators,” Frey said in a statement. “Unfortunately, cable television operators recently started to make it nearly impossible to find and watch these stations.”

Several public access advocacy groups that signed on to the case in support of Maine’s new law also welcomed the court’s ruling.

John Bergmayer, legal director at Public Knowledge, a Washington, D.C.-based public interest group, said the court’s rejection of cable providers’ legal challenge bodes well not just for Maine but other states that have wrestled with the issues.

“States have the authority to enact consumer protection laws and have stepped up to promote privacy, broadband affordability, and net neutrality, among other things,” he said. “While the facts of each case differ, this case should give state lawmakers some assurance that industry lawsuits are often grasping at straws.”

The law passed by the state Legislature in 2019 requires cable operators to offer local PEG channels in high definition and located adjacent to the local channels in a lower tier in the line-up, among other changes.

Lawmakers who backed the measure accused cable companies of marginalizing local cable stations, putting them in a higher, less visible tier in their lineups – jokingly referred to as “digital Siberia” – and for not listing their content in guides.

The Internet & Television Association, or NCTA, a trade group that represents the state’s cable providers, sued to block the law shortly after it was approved.

In court filings, NCTA had argued that the federal Cable Act preempts the Maine statute and asked the appeals court to overturn the state law. The group said the lower court erred when it sided with the state in the case.

“In finding these provisions not preempted, the district court ignored the balance Congress struck in the Cable Act,” lawyers for the group wrote in a recent court filing. “The district court’s analysis proceeds from a faulty premise about the Cable Act’s text, structure and purpose and leads to a series of wrong conclusions.”

But U.S. Circuit Judge David Barron wrote in the 49-page ruling that provisions of Maine law challenged by cable operators qualifies as consumer protection statutes that are valid unless “specifically preempted” by federal law.

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