While many Americans line up at the polls on Nov. 4, the U.S. Supreme Court will bustle with stuffy suits who anxiously await a different outcome: not the results of a recount, or the future of abortion rights, but the snicker-inspiring sound of “dirty words” within the nation’s most sacred chambers. On Election Day, the Supreme Court will hear oral argument in FCC v. Fox Television Stations, a case much anticipated by the press and other courtroom groupies if not purely for the chance to hear the F-word emerge from the lips of one of the robed elders.
The naughty words case that will descend on the court on the morning of the 4th hearkens back to the Radio Act of 1927, which both prohibited “obscene, indecent, or profane language” from being uttered over the radio, and created the Federal Radio Commission as a regulatory body over the relatively recent technology of commercial radio. In 1934 the Federal Communications Commission replaced the Radio Commission, and continues to be in charge of radio and television broadcasting, interstate telecommunications and international communications in the United States.
