## Facts

- Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod (LCMS) held broadcast licenses for KFUO(AM) (noncommercial religious format) and KFUO‑FM (commercial classical music with some religious programming) in Clayton, Missouri.
- LCMS maintained a religious hiring preference, often seeking Lutheran affiliation or knowledge of Lutheran doctrine for a wide range of station positions.
- In a license-renewal enforcement proceeding, the FCC evaluated LCMS under its Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) regime, which emphasized recruitment, hiring, and promotion of minorities and women and relied heavily on workforce statistics.
- The FCC concluded LCMS had inadequate minority and female employment and criticized LCMS’s recruitment practices and reliance on church-related hiring channels.
- The FCC also determined that several roles (including receptionists, secretaries, engineers, and business managers) did not require Lutheran doctrinal knowledge and treated LCMS’s criteria as unjustified.
- The FCC found EEO violations, imposed a $25,000 forfeiture for “lack of candor,” and granted only a short-term license renewal.
- LCMS petitioned for review, challenging the constitutionality of the EEO rules and the legality of the sanctions.

## Issues

1. Whether the FCC’s EEO rules and enforcement policies, by pressuring broadcasters to make race- and gender-conscious hiring decisions to satisfy numerical expectations, violate the equal protection component of the Fifth Amendment.
2. Whether the FCC’s application of the EEO rules impermissibly intruded on LCMS’s religious hiring judgments protected by the Constitution.
3. Whether the FCC’s $25,000 “lack of candor” forfeiture and related sanctions were arbitrary, capricious, or otherwise unlawful.

## Decision

- The D.C. Circuit held the FCC’s core EEO rules unconstitutional because, in operation, they pressured licensees to engage in race-based hiring and therefore triggered strict scrutiny.
- The court concluded the FCC’s asserted objectives and regulatory design failed strict scrutiny, particularly narrow tailoring.
- The court set aside key portions of the FCC’s order imposing EEO-based sanctions and remanded for further proceedings consistent with its constitutional ruling.
- The court reversed and remanded aspects of the forfeiture and remedial orders that depended on the invalid EEO enforcement framework.

## Legal Principles

- Government programs that pressure regulated entities into race-conscious employment decisions are treated as race-based action and are subject to strict scrutiny under the Fifth Amendment’s equal protection component.
- Under strict scrutiny, the government must show a compelling interest and narrow tailoring; reliance on statistical racial balancing, absent a focused remedial basis and limiting criteria, fails narrow tailoring.
- Formal disclaimers against quotas do not control when the practical effect of an enforcement scheme subjects regulated parties to adverse action based on workforce racial composition.
- Agency enforcement that second-guesses which jobs require religious qualifications can intensify constitutional concerns by entangling the government in religious determinations, especially when coupled with race-conscious pressure.

## Conclusion

The D.C. Circuit invalidated the FCC’s EEO enforcement scheme as applied to broadcasters because it effectively compelled race-conscious hiring without satisfying strict scrutiny, and it set aside and remanded sanctions that rested on that unconstitutional framework.


Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod v. FCC, 141 F.3d 344 (D.C. Cir. 1998)