JEM Broadcasting Company, Inc. v. Federal Communications Commission
United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit
22 F.3d 320 (1994)
In 1985, the FCC (defendant) adopted "hard-look" rules for evaluating a flood of expected FM license applications: applications with incorrect or inconsistent data would be rejected as unacceptable for filing with no chance to amend, rather than being sent back for correction. In 1988, JEM Broadcasting (plaintiff) filed an FM license application containing inconsistent geographic coordinates, and the FCC dismissed it under the hard-look rules without letting JEM fix the error. JEM appealed, arguing the hard-look rules themselves were invalid because the FCC adopted them without the APA's notice-and-comment procedures.
Whether the Administrative Procedure Act requires an agency to use notice-and-comment procedures before adopting a rule that authorizes rejecting license applications with no chance to amend.