## Facts

- Reuters applied for thirteen common-carrier fixed microwave radio station licenses, one channel in each of thirteen cities.
- The FCC accepted Reuters’s applications for filing and listed them on a Public Notice dated August 12, 1983.
- Under the FCC’s published procedures accompanying the notice, the FCC could grant licenses 30 days after public notice if no mutually exclusive applications were on file.
- On September 23, 1983, the FCC’s Private Radio Bureau granted all thirteen Reuters applications.
- The same day, Associated (a competitor) submitted applications for the same cities but filed them at the wrong FCC office; they were treated as filed on September 28, 1983.
- Associated protested, asserting the FCC should have waited for an asserted 60-day period to allow competing filings, based on ambiguous language in a recent FCC order.
- The Bureau rescinded Reuters’s grants to allow Associated to be treated as a competing applicant.
- On review, the full Commission acknowledged its rules permitted grant after 30 days and that Reuters’s grants were proper under the rules, but nonetheless affirmed rescission on equitable grounds tied to the Commission’s own ambiguous pronouncements.
- Reuters sought judicial review in the D.C. Circuit.

## Issues

1. Whether the FCC could rescind properly granted licenses to accommodate a competitor’s late-filed applications based on equity and “fairness,” despite clear rules permitting grant after 30 days when no competing applications were on file.
2. Whether the FCC could rely on ambiguous prior statements to depart from the plain text of its regulations and public notice without changing the governing rules through proper procedures.

## Decision

- The D.C. Circuit reversed the FCC’s decision.
- The court held the FCC improperly rescinded Reuters’s lawfully granted licenses and improperly treated Associated’s late-filed applications as competing.
- The court rejected the FCC’s justification that fairness and ambiguous prior Commission language permitted an ad hoc departure from clear, operative rules.

## Legal Principles

- An agency must follow its own binding rules and regulations in adjudication and licensing.
- Equitable considerations and generalized “interest of justice” rationales do not authorize an agency to disregard clear regulatory text and published notice procedures.
- Ambiguous statements in prior agency pronouncements cannot override operative regulations; if the agency wants a different filing period, it must change the rules prospectively through appropriate procedures.
- Licensing regimes require predictable application of published standards so regulated parties can rely on the notice and rules governing filings and grants.

## Conclusion

The court set aside the FCC’s rescission because the Commission conceded Reuters’s grants complied with the 30-day rule and no competing applications were on file at the time of grant; the FCC could not retroactively rework the process to benefit a late filer based on fairness or ambiguity rather than the governing regulations.


Reuters Ltd. v. F.C.C., 781 F.2d 946 (D.C. Cir. 1986)