Public broadcast stations can exclude candidates deemed not "newsworthy" from debates sponsored by those stations, the Supreme Court ruled Monday.
Voting 6-3 in an Arkansas case, the court said the nation's state-owned stations need not invite all ballot-qualified fringe candidates to participate in their debates. State employees can exclude the candidates without violating their free-speech rights, the court ruled.Government-run stations do not run afoul of the Constitution's First Amendment by exercising "viewpoint-neutral exercise of journalistic discretion," Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote for the court.
The ruling could have a wide impact even though it directly affects only government-owned - not privately owned - broadcast stations. About two-thirds of the nation's noncommercial educational stations are licensed to state and local governments or their agencies.
The decision reversed a federal appeals court ruling that said editors of the five-station Arkansas Educational Television Network violated Ralph Forbes' free-speech rights by not inviting him to a 1992 debate of congressional candidates.
Forbes, a former American Nazi Party member who now calls himself a Christian supremacist, was an independent candidate who got about 2.5 percent of the votes cast. Only Democrats and Republicans were invited to the televised, pre-election debate of candidates in the district in which Forbes was running.
He later sued, seeking monetary damages. Monday's ruling kills his lawsuit.
In other action Monday, the court:
- Left intact a federal requirement that airline pilots retire at age 60.
- Ruled that Montana need not pay the Crow Indian Tribe $58 million - and hundreds of millions more in interest - for illegally collected taxes on coal mined on the reservation.
- Rejected environmentalists' challenge of a federal land and resource plan adopted for a national forest in Ohio. The court ruled that the effort to preserve trees from timbering operations was pre-mature.
- Agreed to decide whether passengers can sue airlines in state court over injury claims not covered by a treaty on international air travel.
- Refused to lift an order requiring New Orleans' district attorney to surrender records on a 1960s investigation into the assassination of President Kennedy.
After learning of the decision in the broadcast case, Forbes said he was "utterly stunned and shocked."
"They have overturned the First Amendment," he said in a telephone interview from London, Ark. "It's very Orwellian. It's very chilling. It ought to scare the hell out of anybody with any brains."
Susan Howarth, executive director of the Arkansas Educational Television Network, praised the court's ruling.
"The court has affirmed that we as government-licensed broadcasters have those same rights and freedoms (as private broadcasters) to be able to serve our viewers," she said.
The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had ruled that by sponsoring the debate, the state-owned network had created a limited public forum from which a ballot-qualified candidate like Forbes could be excluded only for some compelling reason.
The justices were told the lower court's ruling could result in fewer debates of candidates and less coverage of politics. The access requirement also could squelch de-bates on controversial social issues, lawyers for the Arkansas network argued.