The Federal Communications Commission would face major obstacles in stripping Disney of broadcast licenses for its ABC television stations, according to legal experts.

The FCC on Tuesday ordered an early review of the ABC licenses, saying it is investigating the network as part of its ongoing probe into Disney’s diversity, equity and inclusion practices. ABC owns eight TV stations, including WABC-TV in New York and KABC-TV in Los Angeles.

The timing of the expedited review is drawing scrutiny, as it occurred the day after President Trump called for Jimmy Kimmel’s firing. This followed a joke Kimmel made on his late-night ABC talk show that angered Mr. Trump and his wife, Melania Trump. 

“This is a way to put pressure on Disney and ABC to achieve different programming and to get them to fire Jimmy Kimmel,” Katie Fallow, deputy litigation director of Columbia University’s Knight First Amendment Institute, told CBS News, adding that the timing of the FCC’s action is “highly suspect.”

Blair Levin, a policy analyst with investment adviser New Street Research who previously worked at the FCC, said in a report that the “timing of the order is strong evidence that the motive for the early renewal process relates to the president’s call to fire Kimmel, not an ABC employment action.”

FCC allegations against Disney

Launched in March 2025, the FCC’s probe into Disney centers on whether the company’s DEI policies violated federal anti-discrimination rules. In a letter to then-Disney CEO Robert Iger last year, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr claimed that ABC’s mandatory “inclusion standards” may have caused racial and identity quotas at every level of production. 

The agency also accuses ABC of using race-based hiring practices and of restricting corporate fellowships to selected demographic groups. The Disney investigation occurred during a broader effort by the Trump administration — already underway at the time — to roll back DEI initiatives across employers, federal agencies, universities and other organizations. 

Disney did not respond to a request for comment. In a statement shared with CBS News earlier this week, a spokesperson for the entertainment company said it has a “long record” of operating in full compliance with FCC rules.

“We are confident that the record demonstrates our continued qualifications as licensees under the Communications Act and the First Amendment and are prepared to show that through the appropriate legal channels,” the spokesperson said.

The FCC also declined to comment, referring CBS News to Carr’s remarks at a press conference on Thursday. Asked by a reporter if the FCC’s move to ask Disney to file early license renewal applications for its ABC stations was connected to Kimmel’s joke, Carr instead focused on the agency’s allegations of discrimination.

“You can go all the way back to more than a year ago, in March of last year, where I wrote a letter to Disney saying that there was evidence… or allegations indicating that Disney, through this sort of invidious form of DEI discrimination, was creating, as I specified in a letter to them, racially segregated spaces inside the company,” he said. 

Carr also noted that the FCC earlier this week ordered another broadcaster, Bridge News, to file early license renewal applications for its TV stations.

“We’ve been very clear that we’re holding broadcasters accountable to their obligations — not just public interest standards, but [equal employment opportunity] obligations,” Carr said, without commenting on Kimmel. 

Rarely used sanction

The FCC has only rarely denied broadcast license renewals. In 1975, however, the agency denied renewal of five radio station licenses after finding that the parent company’s owner instructed stations to provide favorable coverage of two men running for Senate, according to a research paper from Chad Raphael, a communications professor at Santa Clara University.

The National Association of Broadcasters said in a statement on Wednesday that the license renewal process must be grounded in “predictability, fairness, and transparency.” 

The FCC’s “nearly unprecedented request for one company to quickly reapply for all of its licenses — rather than utilize its traditional enforcement process — runs contrary to these principles and creates significant uncertainty for all broadcasters,” the trade group said.

High legal bar

The FCC can challenge broadcasters’ licensing in two ways. First, the agency can decline to renew a license, which involves a lengthy legal process during which the broadcaster can continue operating. Second, the FCC can revoke a license, a more severe sanction that effectively forces a broadcaster off the air. 

The agency did not state in its order to Disney on Tuesday that it would take either measure. Yet while the FCC has the authority to revoke broadcast licenses, both actions face a high legal bar, Andrew Jay Schwartzman, a public interest lawyer specializing in media, told CBS News. 

“There’s no way they would try to revoke the license. The legal standard is insurmountable,” he said. “Revocation places the entire burden on the FCC to demonstrate that the broadcaster is engaged in the most gross forms of abuse of rules and misconduct.”

Due to these guardrails, the FCC has almost never exercised its power to revoke a TV station’s license; Schwartzman notes that the last such case was several decades ago.

The FCC could also deny renewal of ABC’s broadcast licenses, which are granted for eight-year terms, legal experts said. Yet that also could require a nettlesome legal process that could drag on for years. 

The agency would have to document how Disney’s diversity policies are discriminatory and present its case before an administrative law judge, said Robert Corn-Revere, chief counsel at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a nonprofit organization focused on protecting free speech. The judge would then have to issue a decision on each ABC station license, which could all be appealed.

Robert Corn-Revere, chief counsel at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a nonprofit organization focused on protecting free speech, said the FCC’s allegations of discrimination against Disney seem too flimsy to challenge ABC’s licenses. 

“If they’re really just noticing issues on DEI, then they would not be able to get into the programming issues,” Corn-Revere said. “And if they do list programming issues, they buy themselves a whole lot of trouble under the First Amendment.”