## Facts

- Metromedia, Inc. sought FCC consent to transfer over 50% of its stock from dispersed public shareholders to John W. Kluge, Metromedia’s president, CEO, board chair, and 26% shareholder.
- The FCC approved the transaction using a “short-form” transfer procedure after finding no “substantial change” in ownership or control because Kluge had long exercised de facto control with FCC approval.
- California Association of the Physically Handicapped, Inc. (CAPH) petitioned the FCC to reject short-form processing and require a “long-form” application with fuller public-interest review.
- CAPH alleged longstanding failures by Metromedia to serve handicapped persons, including inadequate measures to make television understandable to the hearing impaired and insufficient efforts to employ handicapped persons.
- The FCC denied CAPH’s request for long-form processing.
- CAPH sought judicial review in the D.C. Circuit under 47 U.S.C. § 402(b)(6); Metromedia intervened and challenged CAPH’s standing.

## Issues

1. Whether CAPH had Article III and statutory standing to seek review of the FCC order approving the stock transfer via short-form processing.
2. Whether CAPH’s asserted injuries from Metromedia’s alleged accessibility and employment practices were fairly traceable to, and redressable by vacating or remanding, the FCC’s transfer-approval order.

## Decision

- The court dismissed the appeal for lack of jurisdiction because CAPH lacked standing.
- CAPH’s asserted injuries were not fairly traceable to the FCC’s approval of the stock transfer.
- Vacating the approval would not likely redress CAPH’s injuries because the alleged harms stemmed from Metromedia’s ongoing practices and would persist regardless of the challenged transfer, given Kluge’s preexisting de facto control.
- The court noted that CAPH could pursue challenges to Metromedia’s practices in other FCC proceedings more directly focused on public-service obligations, such as license renewal.

## Legal Principles

- Article III standing requires an injury in fact that is fairly traceable to the challenged government action and likely to be redressed by the requested relief.
- A plaintiff lacks standing when the challenged agency action merely leaves the status quo intact and the alleged injury arises from a regulated entity’s independent conduct that predates and continues irrespective of that action.
- An agency’s alleged failure to use a proceeding as an opportunity to “cure” a preexisting harm does not, by itself, establish causation or redressability for standing purposes.

## Conclusion

The D.C. Circuit held that CAPH could not challenge the FCC’s short-form approval of Metromedia’s stock transfer because CAPH’s asserted accessibility and employment injuries were not caused or worsened by the transfer decision and would not be remedied by overturning it.


Cal. Ass'n of the Physically Handicapped, Inc. v. FCC, 778 F.2d 823 (D.C. Cir. 1985)