Two Republican groups on Monday to temporarily pause a ruling by a federal appeals court that, they told the justices, “rewrote longstanding rules about preferential broadcast rates for political ads.” With the upcoming midterm elections just over two months away, the National Republican Congressional Committee and the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which are devoted to electing Republicans to the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, urged the court to move quickly to block the decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit.
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Under federal election law, candidates for federal office are entitled to purchase advertising time at preferential rates during the 45-day run-up to the primary election and 60 days before the general election. In a “public notice” issued on March 30, 2026, the Federal Communications Commission’s Media Bureau indicated that political parties and joint fundraising committees would also be entitled to the more favorable rates.
Four Democrats who are candidates for the House or Senate, including Sen. Jon Ossoff of Georgia, asked the FCC on April 29 to review the public notice. On June 19, before the FCC had acted on the challengers’ application for review, they went to federal court, where they argued that the public notice was inconsistent with federal election laws. As a practical matter, they contended that the rule favors Republicans, whose fundraising committees have more to spend, while Democratic candidates rely more on small-money donors.
A divided panel of the . Writing for the majority, Judge Robert King held that federal law is “unambiguous”: it gives the preferential rates only to a “candidate” for his or her personal use, which does not extend to a candidate’s “mere authorization of someone else’s use.”
Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson dissented. In his view, it was too soon for the court of appeals to weigh in, because the FCC was still deliberating the issue. He regarded the text as ambiguous: it can “accommodate[], and may indeed favor, the FCC’s view.” Moreover, he added, the court’s decision “restrict[s] political speech in the sensitive period leading up to an election.”
The NRSC and the NRCC, which had joined the case, came to the Supreme Court on Monday, asking the justices to intervene. Like Wilkinson, they first contested the court’s power to consider the challenge in the first place. They dismissed the public notice as a “staff-level” document “that is neither final nor an agency action” – an important distinction because the court only has the power to review “final orders of the Federal Communications Commission.” Instead, they argued, the notice “is at most an interpretive guidance document restating the FCC’s longstanding position regarding” the preferential rates.
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The 4th Circuit’s decision was also wrong on the merits, the committees continued. Whether an entity is entitled to a preferential rate hinges on whether a candidate or “any authorized committee of the candidate” uses a broadcasting station before the election; who pays for the advertisements is irrelevant, they argued. “Indeed,” they suggested, “a candidate might ‘use’ a broadcasting station by appearing in an advertisement authorized by the candidate.”
The 4th Circuit’s ruling, the committees wrote, “will, at a minimum, throw broadcasters, candidates, and campaigns into confusion” by upending current rules “during election season.”
The Trump administration supporting the Republican groups. U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer argued (among other things) that the challengers lacked a legal right to sue, known as standing, because “the notice does not grant favored treatment to one side or the other; instead, the notice’s interpretation offers the same benefit to all sides, including the challengers themselves and the committees and parties supporting them.”
The Republicans’ request goes initially to Chief Justice John Roberts, who handles emergency appeals from the 4th Circuit. Roberts can act on the appeal himself or, as is more likely in this case, refer it to the full court.
The court on Monday afternoon directed the Democratic challengers to respond to the Republicans’ application by noon on Thursday, Sept. 3.
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